{"id":254052,"date":"2025-10-31T21:35:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/254052\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T21:35:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:35:14","slug":"today-in-history-november-1-failed-actress-turned-dictators-wife-takes-revenge-on-star-who-outshone-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/254052\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in History – November 1: Failed actress turned dictator’s wife takes revenge on star who outshone her"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Blood on Wolf Mountain was released in Chinese cinemas on November 1, 1936, it wasn’t seen as the sort of movie to have a lasting impact.<\/p>\n

The film told the story about a village surrounded by bloodthirsty wolves. Ostensibly it was a simple horror film, but was a thinly-veiled allegory for the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.<\/p>\n

But it was the opportunity for a star-making turn for one of the actresses involved.<\/p>\n

\"LiLi Lili became one of China’s most loved actresses. (Public Domain)<\/p>\n

That actress was Li Lili, who outshone the rest of the cast and became one of China’s best-loved actresses.<\/p>\n

It was bad news for Lan Pang, a co-star who took Li’s success personally.<\/p>\n

She left Shanghai the following year, changed her name to Jiang Qing and became a diehard communist.<\/p>\n

She met and married party leader Mao Zedong, though he was already married.<\/p>\n

Though initially prohibited from wielding any political power, Jiang rose to become a powerful figure within the Communist Party.<\/p>\n

There she became, in her own words, the attack dog for her husband.<\/p>\n

\"LanLan Pang, later Jiang Qing, in Blood on Wolf Mountain. (Public Domain)<\/p>\n

During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, she organised the arrest, torture and even murder of party officials and their family members.<\/p>\n

But her wrath was not limited to present rivals.<\/p>\n

On Jiang’s orders, Li Lili and her husband were denounced and tortured.<\/p>\n

Li’s head was shaved by the revolutionary Red Guards.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, her husband died under torture. His body was never returned to his family, only his glasses.<\/p>\n

But despite Jiang’s powerful role in state politics, she was not well-liked among the people of China.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Chairman Mao Zedona and First Lady of China Jiang Qing. (Supplied)\"\"\/Several years after the death of her husband, former First Lady of China Jiang Qing was sentenced to death. (Nine Archives)<\/p>\n

Less than a month after Chairman Mao’s death, she was arrested.<\/p>\n

After a contentious six-week televised trial, Jiang was sentenced to death.<\/p>\n

Her sentence would be commuted but she spent the majority of the rest of her life in prison.<\/p>\n

She died by suicide in 1991. No funeral was held.<\/p>\n

That year Li was given a lifetime achievement award from the Chinese Academy of the Motion Picture Arts.<\/p>\n

The last living movie star of Chinese film’s silent era, Li died of a heart attack in 2005, aged 90.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Blood on Wolf Mountain was released in Chinese cinemas on November 1, 1936, it wasn’t seen as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-254052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}