Li Manyin

Li Manyin, who hailed from Shanghai, was a female substitute teacher at Nanjing Workers’ Spare-time School. When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, she lost her job when her school was closed. She then made a living by installing electric lights and appliances in rural areas. At some point, she was introduced to Wang Tongzhu and helped him with organizing and transcribing his poems. When Wang was arrested in May 1970, Li, who was then working in a small rural factory to the north of Yangzhou City, was also arrested and sent to Nanjing.

On July 30, 1970, the Nanjing authorities held a mass sentencing rally at Wutaishan Stadium. Li Manyin, labeled as “a member of the ‘Wang Tongzhu counterrevolutionary group,’” was one of the twenty-plus political criminals who had been brought to face judgement. Li had been bound and gagged with a rope around her neck beforehand, and her captors had affixed to her a back a large sign that, in red lettering, identified her as “the active counterrevolutionary Li Manyin.” After Wang Tongzhu’s sentence of death was announced, Li’s own sentence was read: 15 years in prison.

Li would ultimately serve nine-and-a-half years of her fifteen-year sentence. Near the end of 1979, she was politically rehabilitated and released from prison.