Song Binbin

Song Binbin (Chinese: 宋彬彬, "properly raised" and "polite"; 1947 – September 16, 2024), also known as Song Yaowu (Chinese: 宋要武, "be violent"), was a Chinese woman who, as a 19-year old, began engaging in violence that led to a role as a senior leader in the Chinese Red Guards during the call to violence by Mao Zedong that was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. 

Although Song denied involvement, she was presumed present when a 50-year old teacher, Bian Zhongyun, was beaten to death by the female students of her school, reportedly the first killing of the Cultural Revolution.

After the Cultural Revolution, Song studied geology and moved to the United States, eventually receiving a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989. After becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen, she worked for the Massachusetts government before moving back to China and becoming the chairwoman of several companies. She apologized for her actions in the Cultural Revolution in 2014, though this was met with mixed reactions. She died in 2024, at the age of 77.

Early life

Song was born in 1947 the daughter of Song Renqiong, one of China's founding leaders known as the Eight Immortals. In 1960, she started studying at the Experimental High School Attached to Beijing Normal University. In 1966, she was a senior leader among the leftist Red Guards at her girls' school in Beijing. The Red Guard worked to overthrow China's institutional frameworks to demonstrate their devotion to Mao.

Cultural Revolution

Song joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in April 1966 as a reserve member. She led a rebellion at Experimental High School which was attached to Beijing Normal University, in Beijing, China.

 

Andreas Lorenz of Der Spiegel writes that Beijing Teachers University was Song's school at the time the Cultural Revolution claimed its first victim; at age 19 years old, Lorenz reports that she was presumed present when the female students of the school beat to death a 50-year old teacher, Bian Zhongyun, with wooden sticks spiked with nails. Song would later claim that the Communist Party's paper, the People's Daily, had forced on her the name "Yaowu", that she "was always opposed to violence", and that she had had no involvement in the murder of her teacher.

The attack of Bian Zhongyun, sometimes reported as a "deputy principal", was in August 1966, and also seriously injured vice-principal Hu Zhitao. That night, Song and others are said to have reported the cause of Bian Zhongyun's death to Wu De, the second secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the CCP at the Beijing Hotel.

Bian's slaying led to further killings by the Red Guards, and eventually over one million of the Guards gathered in Tiananmen Square, where Song famously pinned a red band on Mao Zedong's arm. At that time, Mao mentioned that her name "Binbin", meaning (as variously reported) "properly raised" or "polite" or "elegant", did not suit her well and suggested her to change it to "Yaowu", which means (again, as variously reported) "be violent" or "needs to be militant". The scene was captured in a famous photograph, and it was followed soon after by the Red August. On August 20, 1966, Guangming Daily published an article signed by Song under her pen name "Song Yaowu", "I Put a Red Armband on Chairman Mao", which was reprinted by People's Daily newspaper the next day.

At the end of August, Wang Renzhong met Liu Jin and Song Binbin at the Diaoyutai Guesthouse and mobilized them to go to Wuhan to protect the Hubei Provincial Committee of the CCP. Before Liu Jin went, Song and her classmates went to Wuhan in early September. Soon after, they wrote an article with the keynote of protecting the Hubei Provincial Party Committee of the CCP and handed it to the Provincial Party Committee. Immediately, the local newspaper published an open letter signed under pen name "Song Yaowu".

 

The content was different from the original article by Song and others. The wording was stronger to protect the Hubei Provincial Committee of the CCP. Song was dissatisfied with this. She asked the person in charge of the provincial party committee and issued a statement through the provincial party committee stating that the open letter was not written by her, but she still did not agree to overthrow the provincial party committee.

After returning to Beijing, Song became a member of the "Xiaoyao Faction", and did not participate in the old Red Guard organizations. In April 1968, Song and her mother were taken to Shenyang under house arrest. In the early spring of 1969, Song escaped from Shenyang and went to the pastoral area of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where she moved to the Xilingol League.

In the spring of 1972, at the recommendation of the local herdsmen and the brigade commune, Song was accepted by a university and then returned due to rumors. According to reports from fellow villagers and educated youths, the teacher in charge of university enrollment in Xilingol League admitted Song under pressure, and Song entered Changchun Institute of Geology (now College of Earth Sciences, Jilin University) as a Worker-Peasant-Soldier student.

In 1975, Song received a bachelor's degree from Changchun Institute of Geology.

Later life

After the Cultural Revolution, Song was admitted to the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a graduate student, from 1978 to 1980. In 1980, she went to the United States to study. She received a master's degree in geochemistry from Boston University in the United States in 1983. She completed a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989.

 

After becoming naturalized as a U.S citizen, Song worked for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection as an environmental analysis officer from 1989 to 2003. In 2003, she moved back to China, where she served as chairwoman of the British-owned Beijing Cobia System Engineering Co., Ltd. and Beijing Cobia Innovation Technology Development Co., Ltd.

In September 2007, the Experimental High School Affiliated to Beijing Normal University (formerly the Women's Affiliated High School of Beijing Normal University) named Song Binbin as one of the 90 "honorary alumni" when celebrating the 90th anniversary of the school. This matter caused controversy when Wang Jingyao, husband of Bian Zhongyun, protested because he believed that Song Binbin was the main person in charge of the Red Guards in the school during the Cultural Revolution and thus responsible for the death of his wife.

Controversy over the death of Bian Zhongyun

In 1995, Normal University High School for Girls 1968 alumna Wang Youqin published a text in Hong Kong, "1966: Students play the teacher's revolution", for the first time since August 5, 1966, where Wang wrote that Song and other guards played a role in the death of Bian Zhongyun, are linked to form a causal relationship during those times.

In 2003, Carma Hinton, a graduate of Beijing 101 Middle School, directed the Cultural Revolution documentary Morning Sun, which was not officially released in China, but was released in the United States. Song was interviewed, and for the first time publicly stated that during the Cultural Revolution, she had never participated in violent actions such as beating people, ransacking homes, or destroying the Four Olds. She claimed that Guangming Daily signed her article without seeking her opinion in advance. Song denied that the article was written by her, nor did she authorize the reporter to ghostwrite.

 

In 2004, Wang Youqin published another article "The Death of Bian Zhongyun", where she pointed out that Song was responsible for the Red Guard violence that led to Bian Zhongyun's death. The evidence was a list of seven people who had pledged to the hospital to rescue Bian Zhongyun at the Beijing Posts and Telecommunications University Hospital in Changping District, saying "Six of the seven are Red Guards students. The first name on the list is Song Binbin, a senior in the school and the head of the Red Guards." Song responded to the claims in the article saying that the first name on the list of seven is Li Songwen, a teacher, while her name is ranked last, suggesting that she could not have played a major role in the death of Zhongyun.

In 2002, a collection of publications related to sexology seminars, Chinese Femininities, Chinese Masculinities: A Reader, included research articles by American female scholar Emily Honig on the death of Bian Zhongyun. According to Wang Youqin's article, Honig claimed that Song Binbin was responsible for some of the violent activities in the early parts of Cultural Revolution.

Apology

On January 12, 2014, at a meeting held at High School Attached to Beijing Normal University, which was attended by more than 20 students and more than 30 teachers and family members of the alumni, she apologized for the actions of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.

The apology was met with mixed reactions in China: some people welcomed her words; some people said that these words came too late and are inadequate; others said that the CCP should apologize for the incidents that happened during those times.

 

Cui Weiping, Beijing Film Academy professor and social critic, said in a telephone interview:

Considering her identity, this is not enough. She is an important figure in the Red Guards, and the demands on her should be higher than ordinary people. She said she had witnessed a murder. It's meaningless to say you witnessed a murder and then say you don't know who the killers were.

Wang Youqin said in an interview that Song and various other Red Guards, in the past decade, have been actively denying persecution and involvement during the Cultural Revolution and mass killings during that time and believes that Song's responsibility in all the violence in the Women's Affiliated High School should be obvious, due to her position as one of the deputy directors of the school and organizer of the meetings by the school's revolutionary committee.

In 2014, Bian's husband Wang Jingyao issued a statement accusing Song and others of covering up their evil deeds during the Cultural Revolution. He called their apologies hypocritical and he would not accept their apologies until the truth about their involvement in his wife's death was revealed to the world.

Death

Song died from cancer in New York City, on September 16, 2024, at the age of 77.