The 61st Regiment Farm fire occurred on 18 February 1977, at a frontier farm outside of Khorgos, Xinjiang, China. The fire broke out during a movie screening at the communal hall for Chinese New Year, when a 12-year-old audience member set off a ground-spinning firecracker, which ignited mourning wreaths for Mao Zedong displaying in the hall. Although the wreaths should have been incinerated months before, the regiment felt pressure to keep them. There was a crowd crush at the only exit.
694 people died and 161 were injured in the fire, mostly children of veterans. It is the deadliest fire in China since the foundation of the People's Republic and a major Chinese disaster.[2][3]
Background
Regiment farms at the border
The landscape along the China-Kazakhstan border, 9 km from the 61st Regiment farm
Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the 1977 Chinese New Year drew excited crowds anticipating the first post-Mao era new year.[3] Mao had been clamping down folk traditions especially new year traditions since the 1952 Three-anti campaign and the "Destroy the Four Olds" period (1966-).[7] The 3-day holidays[8] of new year were cancelled in an effort to transform new year from a family occasion into a work units-led Maoist event.[9][7] Without holidays, residents were encouraged to forgo the tradition of visiting relatives afar at new year.[7] The crowds ended up attending the local, fatal movie-showing. Ritual firecrackers at new year were also purged for years,[9][10] but it was made available at the local cooperative in 1977.[3]
After Mao Zedong died in September 1976, children were mobilized to handmake 1,000 mourning wreaths for him.[2] By folk tradition, the wreaths, made of oil paper, would have been incinerated.[b] However, the regiment felt that any mishandling would be smeared as disloyalty to Mao.[2] Their superiors told them to keep it until further instructions.[2] The regiment eventually put the 1,000 wreaths on display in the communal hall. The wreaths pile stood 2 meters high and occupied 120 m2 (1,300 sq ft), roughly one fifth of the floor.[2]
During the 5 months from his funeral to the 1977 Chinese New Year, under Xinjiang's arid weather, the tree branches and paper in the wreaths dried out.[2]
Exits renovation
The festival hall was built in 1966, primarily used for Mao-era denunciation rallies against people of the Five Black Categories. It had an area of 760 square metres (8,200sqft), with a usable floor space of 601 square metres (6,470sqft) and a wooden roof, with reeds, two layers of oiled felt and three layers of asphalt.[14]
In 1975, to welcome Communist Party superiors coming for a policy information talk, the hall were modified to maintain privacy and order. The hall originally had 17 large windows and seven doors. Three doors were sealed and the other three were either locked or bound with steel wire, leaving only a 1.6-metre-wide (5.2ft) main door on the south side of the building. They also bricked the lower part of the windows, leaving only seventeen 0.6 metres (2.0ft) by 1.4 metres (4.6ft) windowless holes.[3] The height of the holes made it difficult to climb during escape.[15] The unaesthetic modification of the hall led to locals comparing it to prisons and warehouses.[2]
The day
Movie showing
Maoist new year entertainment was dominated by communist movies, loyalty dances and revolutionary operas.[9][13] At 1977 new year, the North Korean movie Jeon-u (전우; "Comrade"), a 1958 movie depicting the Chinese People's Volunteer Army intervention in the Korean War,[c] was scheduled to be shown outdoors. Due to temperatures around −20 to −30°C (−4 to −22°F), at last minute it was moved to the communal hall.[2][3]
The regimental propaganda officer had reservations about moving indoors, fearing the children might damage the mourning wreaths for Mao Zedong displayed in the hall, but he was eventually persuaded.[2] The wreath pile, standing 2-meters high, were pushed to the rear of the hall, occupying 120 m2 (1,300 sq ft) space.[2]
Fire
A similar spinning-top like firecracker
At 21:30,[a] the movie started. Firecrackers were lit by children several times inside the hall during the movie-showing. The staff made announcements twice threatening to suspend the movie-showing should there be any more firecrackers.[2]
At 23:15, minutes before the movie ended, at the iconic closing scene when a Chinese and a North Korean soldier hugged,[2] several children climbed and seated on the slope of the pile of Mao Zedong's mourning wreaths. A 12-year-old boy (grade 6), Zhao Guanghui, lit a "burrowing rat" (地老鼠), a spinning top-like firecracker. It curved and spun into the wreaths, setting it on fire.[15] Children who had noticed the fire attempted to alert adult audience members, but the warnings were ignored by the adults, including the regiment's attending leaders, since they wanted to enjoy the first proper new year without disruptions, believing that the children were playing a harmless prank.[2]
The wires mounted on the roof caught fire and spread dense smoke. The burning wooden panels and asphalt started falling off the roof.[3]
Escape and deaths
There was only one small exit after renovation. Children who brought their personal stools to watch the movie carried their stools during escape, further blocking the exits. A crowd crush happened, with a pile around 2–3 metres (6.6–9.8ft) high, while those unable to reach the exit were killed by burning asphalt or falling roof tiles.[14] Eventually, a hole was smashed in a sealed door on the northern side, allowing a few children to be pulled out.[2]
In total, 694 died and 161 were injured, some becoming permanently disabled.[3] 597 of the victims were under the age of 16. The Tuanchang Sub-School district lost nearly a third of its roughly 1,600 students. Several children were left orphaned due to the death of parents and siblings in the disaster. Many spent numerous years undergoing treatment for lasting injuries, with some having suffered burns to up to 90% of their bodies.[2] The deaths were mostly members of veteran families, who formed the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. This was the deadliest fire in China after the founding of the People's Republic of China,[16][15][17][18][19] deadliest fireworks fire in China,[20] deadliest cinema fire in China,[21] and one of the deadliest disasters in Chinese history.
Body recovery
The 8th Border Regiment, based in Huiyuan, 80km (50mi) from the fire site, received a phone call from the YiliMilitary District. Two companies with a total of 280 soldiers were sent to the site of the fire. The night was dark and locals were under the belief that their loved ones trapped in the collapsed building were still alive.[3]
The crowd cleared out a path, but the soldiers couldn't enter, as bodies were stacked nearly a meter high at the exit of the hall. Most of them were burnt to cinders, and some were stuck together like asphalt. The air was filled with a sickening stench so foul it was impossible to get close without wearing a mask. We held our shovels and pickaxes, not knowing how to begin the task at hand.
Each soldier came equipped with a pickaxe, a shovel and two masks. Since there was a crowd watching, the soldiers felt it was more respectful to use their bare hands to retrieve the bodies rather than to use the metal tools,[3] but they found it difficult to separate bodies that were sticking to each other using just their hands. It was more difficult to separate the bodies stuck at the top of the pile because snow had frozen on them. The cleanup lasted four hours.[3] The bodies were gathered at the local school, where students with carpentry skills built coffins for the deceased.[2]
Investigation
The deputy communist party secretary of the Ili Prefecture, Ma Ji, led the investigation. Ma also became the acting chief of the 61st Regiment farm.[3] Several relatives of the deceased blamed regiment leadership for the fire. There was particular anger directed towards regiment farm's political commissar Zhou Zhengfu, whose daughter was also killed in the fire, since he did not make any public appearances despite repeated attempts at reaching out by affected townspeople. Some plotted to exhume the corpse of the daughter of Zhou and whip it in protest, but Ma Ji laid down on the grave and told the crowd that they would have to kill him to desecrate the grave. Ma ultimately convinced the mob that Zhou did not bear responsibility for the fire and that he was also grieving a family member. Similarly, when Public Security arrived, sent by party leaders concerned that the bereaved families might resort to violence, Ma convinced his superiors to not issue any arrest and leave the families alone under consideration of their emotional state. Ma organised the repatriation of many of the 61st Regiment farm's inhabitants to their original hometowns to reunite with extended family, asking other regiment farms to take affected residents in so that they would at least not be kept in constant proximity to the site of the disaster.[3]
Internal Chinese propaganda initially claimed the fire was started by "class enemies" and those aligned with Soviet revisionism.[14] By March 1977, the State Council, acknowledged the lighting of firecrackers by children as the principal cause of the fire. Additional blame was cast on the farm regiment's leadership for collectively failing to prevent the mishaps that led to the large-scale fire, such as allowing the projectionist team to relocate to the ill-fitting communal hall, not stopping the children from lighting fireworks, not disposing of the mourning wreaths on their own accord, and not having an existing fire escape plan for the building in place.[2]
The 12-year-old boy responsible for setting the firecracker escaped unscathed. Accompanied by his parents, he turned himself in to the authorities. He was sentenced to laogai labor and later to juvenile detention. After his release, he went to Guangdong and as of 2007, his whereabouts are unknown.[2][3] The regiment farm staff in charge of the movie showing were detained for 29 months until the local court chose not to prosecute. It's presumed that they left Xinjiang for Hubei after release. Several other party leaders, both of the regiment farm and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, were subjected to disciplinary measures and subsequently transferred to different farms and bureaus.[2]
The non-disposal of the mourning wreaths of Mao Zedong and the exit renovation as contributing factors to the fire were not discussed on some media reports even many years later.[14]
Media non-coverage
The Soviet press picked up the news instantly because the fire was in close distance to the Kazakhstan border.[14] During the Cultural Revolution era, Chinese media typically did not report accidents to not spoil the revolutionary spirit, as in this 1977 fire, the 1976 Tangshan earthquake and the 1970 Tonghai earthquake.[20][22][23] The accident was not reported in China until 1995.[2] It was then featured in several firefighter journals.[24][16][20]
Remembrance
Occasionally this accident was used to remind students of the danger of fire.[25] It became an annual tradition by Alimali residents to mourn the deaths on each eve of 18 February by burning hell money at the site of the fire and graves of the victims.[3]
A memorial park, named Jianyuan (鉴园) started construction in 1997 after bulldozing the remains of the hall. It was designed to be a theme park on fire safety, but was yet to be finished in 2007.[3] The victims of the fire are buried at Sandapian (三大片; "Three Big Pieces"), so named as this cemetery was formed by joining three pieces of land.[3][14]
↑ Memorial wreaths are either incinerated or transferred to the deceased person's cemetery.[2] As Xinjiang was far from Mao's cemetery in Beijing, incineration was the natural option.
↑ known in Chinese official sources as "War of Resisting America and Assisting Korea"
References
1 2 3 六十一团杨江生; 师史志办张萍 (29 July 2008). "六十一团概况". 新疆生产建设兵团第四师政务信息网. Archived from the original on 22 April 2013. Retrieved 22 February 2013.
↑ 高華 (2016). "代序：一個外逃者眼中的蘇聯"[Foreword](PDF). In 雷光漢; 蕭默 (eds.). 蘇聯流亡記：一個中國「外逃者」的回憶錄[Exile to the Soviet Union: memoir of a Chinese intellectual]. Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. p.xxi-xxxvii. Archived from the original(PDF) on 3 August 2023.
1 2 3 4 忻平; 赵凤欣 (2014). "革命化春节：政治视野下的春节习俗变革——以上海为中心的研究"[A political perspective on the evolution of Chinese New Year traditions in Shanghai]. 中共党史研究 (8): 108, 112. Archived from the original on 25 January 2025.
1 2 3 4 马潇 (2011). "国家权力与春节习俗变迁——家庭实践视野下的口述记忆（1949—1989）" [Oral history reflecting the Evolution of Chinese New Year traditions in accordance with the Powers of the State (1949—1989)]. In 周星 (ed.). 国家与民俗[State and Folklore]. 中国社会科学出版社. pp.190–197, 202–203.
↑ 丁广惠 (2016). "国家机关及其下属机构对发展春节的重要作用"[Government's role in promoting Chinese New Year]. In 丁广惠 (ed.). 中国传统礼俗考(第2版). 黑龙江教育出版社. pp.116, 411. Archived from the original on 6 December 2024. 文革的革命化春节，是在红色恐怖中过的，更有些人是在政管室、牛棚或秦城监狱过的，那种压抑而不安的气氛. Alternatively titled "政府对发展春节文化的重要作用", 2011.
1 2 3 4 5 6 高栋 (2010). "697人丧生的61团场火灾"[The 61st Regiment farm fire costing 697 lives]. 炎黄春秋 (8). Archived from the original on 24 July 2020. Retrieved 24 July 2020.
↑ 陈久邦 (1996). "火相伴电影100年——世界电影华诞百年后记" [A century of fire and cinema]. 安徽消防 (9): 37. 1977年2月18日是我国电影史上最灰暗的日子。这天傍晚新疆生产建设兵团伊犁地区第61团礼堂...死亡人员中90%是小学生和儿童
↑ 汤国基 (2009). "灾难新闻见证中国大进步"[Disaster journalism reflect China's progress]. In 阎长龄; 赵敏 (eds.). 智者的思考：2008〈杂文月刊〉精选作品. 中国时代经济出版社. pp.95–97. Archived from the original on 19 June 2016.
↑ 雷颐 (2008). "文革的三次地震与汶川之震"[Three earthquakes during the Cultural Revolution era]. 炎黄春秋 (7). Archived from the original on 14 October 2020.
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