The 10th anniversary of the death of Jiang Qing, the most powerful woman in communist China and wife of Mao Zedong, passed without official comment yesterday.
Two weeks after her death on May 14, 1991, Xinhua reported that she had committed suicide in her home.
The former actress from Shandong province was rumoured to be suffering from throat cancer. Jiang - together with Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan - made up the Gang of Four. They were widely blamed for instigating the Cultural Revolution which plunged China into decade-long political chaos and armed conflicts similar to a civil war.
Jiang's story continues to fascinate both Chinese and foreigners, some of whom view her as a feminist martyr.
A book on the Gang of Four published last year by the Modern Arts Publishing House often verges on the sympathetic.
'It was strange that she killed herself,' the book's author Ye Yonglie says. 'There was no reason for her to do so. Perhaps it was only because she knew she had no hope of being freed.'
By the time of her death, she was 77 years old and had been in Qincheng prison for 15 years. She was imprisoned in 1976, tried in 1980 and initially sentenced to death. At an unknown time, she was released and allowed to live at a closely guarded home in Beijing although her life sentence was not commuted.