A stage photo shows people from different walks of life read Fan Changjiang's stories of the Red Army in 1935. [Photo by Huang Zhiling/chinadaily.com.cn]

Fan Changjiang

The drama performed by the cast from the Sichuan People's Art Theater starts with the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) when Fan (1909-70) was disgraced and ordered to write a report about his possible wrongdoings in his personal history.

Recalling the past, Fan narrates how he is ambitious to help rejuvenate his ailing motherland at a young age and enters a school training officials for the Nationalist government where he joins the Kuomintang.

As he is dissatisfied with the Nationalist government's failure to resist the Japanese army which occupies Northeast China in 1931, Fan leaves the school and parts with the Kuomintang.

In 1935, Fan becomes the first reporter from the Kuomintang-occupied areas to enter northern Shaanxi province, writing true stories of the Red Army led by Mao Zedong and the Long March for Ta Kung Pa, a widely read Chinese-language newspaper.

Two years later, he meets Mao Zedong in Yan'an, Shaanxi. Influenced by Mao, he joins the Communist Party of China and works as the president of the People’s Daily after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

During the "cultural revolution," Fan is persecuted to death because he does not tell lies.

After the "cultural revolution" is over, Fan is rehabilitated and the All-China Journalists Association sets up the Fan Changjiang Journalism Award in 1991 as the highest award for young and middle-aged Chinese journalists, encouraging them to seek truth as Fan.