Hai Rui
Yang writes that Mao had encouraged Wu Han to write the essay "Hai Rui Scolds the Emperor," published under Wu's pen name in the People's Daily in June 1959, which was based on events in the life of a Ming dynasty official. Wu subsequently turned the essay, after multiple revisions, into the Beijing opera Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, which was performed in 1961 to great acclaim. Subsequently, "...the hypervigilant Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng decided [it] was ... 'related to the Lushan Conference and ... implicitly endorsed 'assigning output quotas to households' and the ongoing verdict-reversal wind. Mao took their views seriously and instructed Jiang Qing to find a hit man to denounce the play."