Famed, shamed minister dies
Writer Zhou Erfu, best known for his pro-revolutionary novel Morning of Shanghai, has died aged 90 in Beijing.
A graduate of Guanghua University in Shanghai, Zhou reached the height of his political career in 1978 as vice-minister of culture.
In 1986, he was dismissed as vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and stripped of his party membership for having a 'corrupt lifestyle violating communist moral standards', Xinhua reported at that time.
Zhou, born in 1914 in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, was interested in literature from his early years.
He joined the pro-communist literature and art movement in the 1930s. His first publication, a collection of poems, appeared in 1936.
In 1938, Zhou arrived in Yanan, Shaanxi, the so-called 'cradle of the Chinese revolution' which was then the headquarters of the Communist Party.
He became a member of the party in 1939.
Zhou was editor of Mass Magazine in the 1940s. He worked as a special correspondent for Xinhua Daily and the Xinhua News agency in 1946, before coming to Hong Kong to edit literary publications.
He earned fame in the 1950s after completing the 1.75-million-word epic Morning of Shanghai. Xinhua said it took Zhou 17 years to write the novel, which dealt with the so-called 'socialist transformation' in Shanghai after 1949, during which capitalist industrial and commercial businesses were taken over by the Chinese government. The novel earned fame among a new generation in the late 1980s when it was adapted into a popular television drama.
Zhou's dismissal and expulsion from the Communist Party in 1986, when he was 72, earned him notoriety.
He was punished after reports he had visited prostitutes and sex shops during an official trip to Tokyo in 1985. He was also said to have been criticised for visiting Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine honouring the Japanese war dead, including several convicted war criminals.
The mainland-backed Ta Kung Pao reported he had watched pornographic videotapes at his Tokyo hotel and had 'invited a young female interpreter to interpret things for him'.
Official media reports of his death on January 9 did not mention his sacking.
