Today, let’s talk about a widely known story in mainland China – the “Crowing of the Cock at Midnight”.
When mentioning the “Crowing of the Cock at Midnight”, do you immediately think of the tyrant landlord “Zhou Bapi” who made the laborers imitate rooster calls in the middle of the night to work longer? This story has accompanied several generations through their childhood.
“Zhou Bapi” is listed alongside “Nan Batian”, “Huang Shiren”, and “Liu Wencai” as the “Four Evil Landlords”, portrayed by the CCP as typical representatives of the so-called “exploiting class of the old society”, appearing in numerous film and literary works.
But did you know? This story is actually fictional! In 2011, a book titled “The Cock Doesn’t Crow at Midnight” emerged, written by a descendant of “Zhou Bapi”. He spent five years investigating, attempting to reveal the truth.
Today, let’s follow in the footsteps of this descendant to see what kind of person “Zhou Bapi” really was, and whether the cock would indeed crow at midnight.
Meng Lingqian, born in the 1970s, had no idea about the connection between “Zhou Bapi” and himself when he was a child. It was not until he was seven or eight years old that, during a disagreement with other children in the village, they pointed at him and shouted, “Zhou Bapi! Zhou Bapi!” Confused, Meng ran home and asked his mother, “Are we the Zhou Bapi family?”
To his surprise, his mother was stunned and then gave him a hard slap! This slap made young Meng feel both wronged and puzzled. His mother had never hit him like that before, and later they even cried together.
Since then, Meng Lingqian became sensitive to the name of “Zhou Bapi”, feeling inferior and afraid to argue with others, always feeling inferior, as if others held something against him.
Even worse, in the fourth grade of primary school, the text “The Cock Doesn’t Crow at Midnight” appeared in the Chinese textbook. That day, the teacher deliberately called out his name, making him stand up to read the text.
Meng Lingqian recalled that he trembled as he stood up, reading through tears, his cheeks burning like fire. The excited eyes of his classmates are still fresh in his memory. This text became a shadow of his childhood, pushing him to determine to find out the truth!
In order to rid himself of the label of being a “descendant of Zhou Bapi”, Meng Lingqian studied hard and left the village. He worked as a sailor, a public relations officer in a state-owned enterprise, a journalist, and finally settled in Dalian.
In 2003, he published an article about “Zhou Bapi” on a website, recounting the story of his family. Unexpectedly, the article caused a sensation but was quickly deleted. This incident made him realize that behind the story of “Zhou Bapi” may hide even greater secrets.
Since then, Meng Lingqian spent almost all weekends and holidays on research. He visited libraries, archives, old book markets, read historical, political, and military books, visited relatives, parties involved, and even consulted experts in biology, meteorology, and agronomy.
After five years of relentless efforts, he finally pieced together a true image of “Zhou Bapi”. This image is drastically different from the tyrant landlord in the textbook!
“Zhou Bapi” was actually named Zhou Chunfu, a native of Fuxian, Liaoning, now known as Wafangdian. His ancestors moved from Shandong to Northeast China to make a living by clearing land. By the time of Zhou Chunfu, the family only had a few acres of thin fields, barely enough to eat.
How did Zhou Chunfu become wealthy? By frugality, saving money to buy land, and running a few small workshops. Meng Lingqian described his great-grandfather as “extremely thrifty”. A former laborer recalled Zhou Chunfu as someone who was always covered in dust, wearing simple clothes, and tying a piece of rag around his waist, far from the image of a wealthy landlord.
In 1911, at the age of 38, Zhou Chunfu built the so-called “Zhou Family Mansion”. It might sound grand, but it was just three stone houses! Most local villagers lived in mud and straw houses at that time, and only those with slightly better financial conditions had stone houses. These stones were brought back by Zhou Chunfu himself and his eldest son from the mountain valley, worked hard for six months before completing the construction, which even caused him to develop a hunched back due to fatigue.
By the 1940s, the Zhou family owned nearly 200 acres of land. With eight children in the family, the land and workshops became too much to handle, so they hired long-term and short-term laborers.
Zhou Chunfu’s eight children described him as “stingy”! While other girls didn’t have to work in the mountains, the Zhou girls had to. When others wore nice clothes, Zhou Chunfu didn’t allow it; afraid they would get dirty working and not put in effort.
At meal times, he told his children to eat until they were 80% full, eating more was considered wasteful. Leftover food had to be dried and eaten for the next meal. When daughters came back to visit, they were not allowed to stay the night, afraid they would eat too much!
But in the eyes of the long-term and short-term laborers, Zhou Chunfu was a completely different person. He valued hardworking laborers and treated them better than his own family, often saying, “If you aren’t good to workers, why would they work well for you?”
During the Cultural Revolution, a former long-term laborer of Zhou’s was asked to come forward and “recall past hardships” on stage, exposing the crimes of the landlord. However, unintentionally, he mentioned what they ate at Zhou’s place. They had bread, corn porridge, tofu – better than what they eat now! They could earn enough to feed their whole family in a year! The officials quickly pulled him off the stage.
The laborers also recalled that Zhou Chunfu himself never enjoyed a luxurious life, working hard from dawn to dusk alongside his workers. So, the story of forcing laborers to work in the middle of the night? A former laborer remembered, “Waking up early is true, but everyone worked equally from the earliest hours; those cooking cooked, those feeding animals fed, could you still lie in bed and slack off?”
How did the story of “The Cock Doesn’t Crow at Midnight” come about?
“The Cock Doesn’t Crow at Midnight” is a chapter in Gao Yubao’s autobiographical novel “Gao Yubao”. Gao Yubao claimed that he witnessed the Zhou family making the laborers imitate rooster calls in the middle of the night, but the Zhou family members said they had never seen Gao Yubao!
Zhou Changyi, the third son of Zhou Chunfu, recalled that at that time, the Zhou family hired several laborers, sometimes two or three, sometimes six or seven, and none of these people were called Gao Yubao.
In 1963, when Gao Yubao came to the village for a meeting, it was the first time Zhou Changyi had seen him. He recalled that Gao Yubao instructed everyone to tell outsiders that “Gao Yubao had worked at the Zhou family” and “not to speak recklessly.”
Gao Yubao also said that writing about “Zhou Bapi” was not about the Zhou family but, “Could such a thing not have happened? Fiction is meant to educate the public!”
If “The Cock Doesn’t Crow at Midnight” was entirely fictional, then why did Gao Yubao do it? Meng Lingqian’s investigation entered the next stage.
Gao Yubao was born in 1927 and joined the army in 1947. He admitted that at the time, he was illiterate.
In 1949, he starts writing his autobiography with only a few words he could write. His way of “writing” novels was through drawing.
He proudly showed his “Party Membership Application”. Although it was supposed to be an application letter, it consisted of only eight characters – “I want to join the party from my heart”.
Even of these eight characters, he only truly knew how to write “I”. He represented the character “from” with a curly caterpillar, drew a heart instead of the character “heart”, drew an eye for the character “eye”, represented “li” with a pear, “yao” was a homophone, “yu” represented “enter”, and “zhong” indicated the sound of a bell sounding “dang” as “dang”!
This kind of person, how did he write a 200,000-word autobiography? In short: he relied on the support and ghostwriting of the CCP.
In the early 1950s, there was a nationwide campaign to eradicate illiteracy. Illiterate soldier Gao Yubao showed enthusiasm by writing his autobiography in a pictographic way, criticizing the old world and praising the new world, becoming a reported example by the military. The army even brought in professionals to help him “write”. This professional was Guo Yongjiang, pen name “Huangcao”.
Guo Yongjiang had previously served as Deputy Editor of “Liberation Army Literature” and Deputy Director of August First Film Studio. Before his death, he revealed that the 13 chapters of the book “Gao Yubao” were written by him. While the army tasked him with helping Gao Yubao edit his autobiography, he found it unchangeable and decided to ghostwrite it.
In other words, Gao Yubao didn’t write a single word and overnight became a military writer, later even becoming the club director of Dalian Military District, equivalent to a rank officer.
The original edition of “Gao Yubao” contained a postscript by Huangcao titled “How I Helped Comrade Gao Yubao Edit the Novel”. The royalties were split evenly between Gao Yubao and Huangcao.
However, after the Anti-Rightist Movement, due to the “current situation needs,” the postscript and name of Guo Yongjiang gradually disappeared from future editions of “Gao Yubao,” until they were completely removed.
So, what did Guo Yongjiang say about the authenticity of the stories in the book? In order to be “real,” the book used real names and surnames, but “The Cock Doesn’t Crow at Midnight” was completely fictional, based on folk legends, aiming to highlight the evils of the landlord class.
Doesn’t this sound contradictory? A false story using real names. What was the purpose? To incite public hatred against the landlord class, based on a story that is completely contrary to reality.
Lastly, let’s talk about the core of this story: do the cocks truly crow at midnight?
Meng Lingqian consulted a pastor who had been raising chickens for 30 years. The expert explained that a rooster crowing required two conditions: an adult rooster and natural light stimulation. In southern Liaoning, near the summer solstice, sunrise is at 4:28 in the morning, and roosters typically crow around 3:30 am, around dawn.
The laborers’ task was to weed the rice paddies. During the time of “Zhou Bapi,” at midnight without any street lights, how could the laborers distinguish between rice seedlings and weeds? Zhou Chunfu and the laborers were skilled farmers, wouldn’t they know this common knowledge?
Meng Lingqian concluded: the crowing of the cock at midnight was simply impossible!
Meng Lingqian turned his five years of investigation into the book “The Cock Doesn’t Crow at Midnight”, revealing the true life of Zhou Chunfu.
When this book was published, Gao Yubao became aware of Meng Lingqian’s existence. He sent a message saying, “Writing ‘Gao Yubao’ was necessary at the time, now that you have written this book, we can talk, and if I need to apologize, I will.” But then he continued, “Many people want to sue me, but I have stopped them all. He’s still a child; whatever mistakes he made, I can forgive him.”
Doesn’t this sound strange? Clearly, Gao Yubao’s story wrongly accused the Zhou family for decades, why is he the one talking about “forgiveness” to Meng Lingqian? Has he lived in the lie he created for so long that it became the truth to him, even fooling himself with his own fabricated stories?
-[Production Team of “A Century of Truth”]