Chen Yuying

Chen Yuying, born in the late Qing dynasty in Anqing Prefecture, Anhui Province, was the eldest daughter of Chen Duxiu and his first wife Gao Xiaolan. Gao Xiaolan was the eldest daughter of Gao Dengke, a Qing dynasty deputy general; together with Chen Duxiu they had four sons and one daughter, namely Chen Yannian, Chen Qiaonian, Chen Songnian, and Chen Yuying. (Note: the original text lists four children by name, though it states “four sons and one daughter.” There is a discrepancy, as the named individuals include three sons and one daughter.)

All three of her brothers were involved in China’s modern revolutionary activities. In June 1927, the eldest brother Chen Yannian, then secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, was arrested and killed by Kuomintang agents. After learning the news, Chen Yuying went to Shanghai to handle the funeral; the body was not retrieved, and she could only burn paper offerings along the Huangpu River to mourn. In February of the following year, the second brother Chen Qiaonian was also killed in Shanghai’s Longhua Prison. The two incidents occurred only a few months apart.

In 1928, Chen Yuying died in Shanghai after her brothers’ successive deaths, becoming Chen Duxiu’s third child to die in 1928. This sequence of events has been recorded as one of the historical episodes affecting Chen Duxiu’s family.

Related historical sources also indicate that this sequence of events became an important material for writer He Jianming to create his full-length novel The Revolutionary, which aims to portray the historical circumstances and tragedy of a family of revolutionaries.