Friday, July 15 1921: Chinese tragic heroine, Sun Weishi was born.

1921 (Taisho 10) On Friday, July 15, Sūn Wéishì was born in Nanxi County, Sichuan Province. His father was a revolutionary, Sūn Bíangwén. Mother is Yǔ Rénruì. Around the time when Sūn Wéishì was born, her father was the chief of the Sichuan Mint in the Republic of China, but in September 1922 he returned to Germany together with Zhū dé. Zhū is the father of the People’s Liberation Army. They met with Zhōu ēnái in Germany, who was also studying in Europe, and joined the Communist Party of China in Berlin. In April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek’s father, Sūn Bíangwén, was assassinated in the so-called 4.12 coup d’etat in Shanghai.

In 1936, when Wéishì was 15 years old, she became an adopted daughter of her father’s close friend, Zhou Enlai and his wife Dèng yíngchāo, both of whom had no children. In 1939, with the advice of his adoptive father, Zhou Enlai, she went to Moscow to study drama. After returning to Japan, she participated in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Cultural Working Group. Wéishì gained fame as an actress and director of the play, but during the period of the Cultural Revolution she was severely persecuted by Jiangqing, the same actress who became the wife of Mao Zedong, and was eventually arrested and murdered in prison. Zhou Enlai could not save his daughter in the storm of the Cultural Revolution. It is said that Wéishì, just before her death, was tortured and asked to testify falsely in order to entrap her father, Zhou Enlai, but she did not yield to the request and protected her father from the attack of his political rival, Jiangqing.