Li Binzhu

Li Binzhu (8 November 1921 – 12 July 2007) was a Chinese-Austrian judge and politician.

She was a long-time fighter in the war of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

She developed a school model for literacy of rural women.

1936 she joined the Chinese National Liberation Vanguard Organization.

In 1937, after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, she left the Pedagogical Art School in Henan Province and returned to Yanshi to participate in the War of Resistance against Japan.

To appeal to the Liberation Movement, Li Binzhu organized the Reading-/ Women's Group and the National Liberation Theater in Yanshi.

She joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) in February 1938.

In July of the same year, she took leave of her home, went to Yan'an and devoted herself wholeheartedly to the cause of the war against Japanese aggression.

By the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Li Binzhu lived in Yan'an for eight years.

She studied Jurisprudence at the university there, worked in the security bureau of the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region, and later in the education department of the Guanzhong

Zone Commission.

In 1943, Li Binzhu was assigned by the CCP to conduct the so-called "winter learning campaign" through literacy, poverty reduction and backwardness in the Londong area, one of the CCP's resistance centers.

Initially, she taught the farmers to read in her winter school, teaching them socially, politically, and scientifically learnings.

Quickly Li Binzhu realized that due to poverty and lack of education, the old customs still continued to exist, such as: The Child marriage, the Foot binding, superstition of the witch doctor, ignorance of the social life and women's suffrage.

In the region there was still a very high number of gynecological diseases and a high infant mortality.

In this village, 43 out of 54 women suffered from gynecological diseases, and among 194 newborns, 106 were reported to have died.

According to the local conditions she analyzed, Li Binzhu worked on a new implementation strategy.

She changed the winter school curriculum and focused on hygiene instruction and obstetrics as the main teaching content.

Chinese characters and other knowledge were taught to female participants as well.

This was so well received by the population that the number of participants tripled within a week.

Many women now enthusiastically attended classes.

Because the school achieved very positive results and was very polarizing, the school model was quickly promoted and implemented throughout the region.

Li Binzhu's work was highly prized by the CCP Central Committee.

Xu Teli, Mao Zedong's teacher, president of the Yan'an Academy of Natural Sciences, said of her winter school: "This school taught people the practical knowledge of life. Once the problem of the Obstructed labour (severe birth, risk birth) of women is resolved, the old thinking in the past history is corrected, that Manuscript culture (education) of women is useless."

Lin Boqu, President of the Border Region, gave her an honorary title.

Li Binzhu's winter school model has been described in "Chinese Educational History" and "Modern Chinese History."

In 1945, she married Austrian physician Richard Frey, an antifascist fighter in Yan'an.

In the period of the civil war and after the founding of the People's Republic of China she worked as a judge, later as a process leader and as a commissioner in the People's Procuratorate.

On 15 July 1945 Li Binzhu married Dr. Richard Frey, who was a researcher and lecturer at the China Medical University (PRC) in Yan'an at the time.

After defeating the War of Resistance, Richard Frey and Li Binzhu, who was pregnant at the time, marched with the army into the Zhangjiakou City Liberation Zone.

In 1946, Li Binzhu worked as a judge at the People's Court of Zhangjiakou City, while caring for her child born in the war and assisting her husband in producing penicillin, which he had already started in Yan'an.

After the outbreak of the civil war, the city of Zhangjiakou fell into the hands of Kuomintang Party.

In 1958 she and her husband had to give up their posts for political reasons.

She then worked as a principal in a high school and became a critic of the political movements Anti-Rightist Campaign and Great Leap Forward.

In 1959, under political pressure, she finally had to annul her marriage and raise her three children on her own.

After overcoming a severe depression, she worked until her retirement in 1982 as a party secretary in the clothing industry.

She died 2007 in Vienna.

Li Binzhu was born in Yanshi County, Henan, China.

Her father practiced traditional Chinese medicine in the countryside.

During her time at the county middle school, her political stand was actively influenced by her Chinese language teacher and communist Wu Zhipu.