He was denounced as a "rightist" during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and performed hard labour in the "Great Northern Wilderness" for three years, and was again persecuted during the Cultural Revolution.

Despite these ordeals, Wu continued to criticize government censorship and to call for political freedom, and was widely admired for his moral conviction.

His grandfather Wu Zhiying (吴稚英) was a muliao of the Qing dynasty reformer Zhang Zhidong and participated in the Xinhai Revolution.

[1] As eastern China fell to the Japanese, he moved to the wartime capital Chongqing, where he worked as an editor for the Xinmin Wanbao newspaper.

In 1945, he published Mao Zedong's now famous poem "Snow: to the Tune of Garden in Full Spring", which infuriated the Kuomintang government.

[1] He escaped to British Hong Kong to avoid being captured by KMT agents, and made a living writing screenplays and making films.

[7] After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) won the Civil War and established the People's Republic of China in 1949, Wu returned to Beijing.

Like many intellectuals at the time, he held high hopes for the new People's Republic which finally restored peace in a united China after decades of war and division.

[8] He wanted to return to writing plays, but was assigned by the government to direct Song of the Red Flag, a film about women textile workers.

[7] In 1951, his friend Lao She introduced him to the famous pingju opera performer Xin Fengxia, who had acted in one of Wu's plays and admired his talent.

[4] During Mao Zedong's Anti-Rightist Campaign, Wu was denounced as a "rightist" in 1957 and sent to the Great Northern Wilderness in Heilongjiang to be "reformed through labour.

[10] After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Wu was politically rehabilitated in 1980[3] and inducted into the CCP, an event he described as "neither an occasion for laughter or tears",[12] and his publication ban was lifted after two decades.

Following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, Wu called for a reassessment of the incident, but was forbidden to speak at a Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference meeting.