Bai Hua, who yielded to the ostracism (a procedure under Athenian democracy in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years) and wrote a letter of self-criticism addressed to Jiefangjun Bao and Wenyibao (Literary Gazette), in which he apologized for a "lack of balance" in "Bitter Love" and for failing to recognize the power of the party and the people to overcome obstacles in Chinese society, was invited by the Ministry of Culture to participate in a Shanghai conference on film scripts in January 1983.
Finally, Bai Hua yielded to the ostracism and wrote a letter of self-criticism addressed to Jiefangjun Bao and Wenyibao (Literary Gazette), in which he apologized for a "lack of balance" in "Bitter Love" and for failing to recognize the power of the party and the people to overcome obstacles in Chinese society. Ostracism (Greek: , ostrakismos) was a procedure under Athenian democracy in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years. In January 1983 he was invited by the Ministry of Culture to participate in a Shanghai conference on film scripts, and in May of that year the Beijing People's Art Theater presented his new historical play, "The King of Wu's Golden Spear and the King of Yue's Sword," thought by many to be a veiled criticism of Mao Zedong and perhaps even of Deng Xiaoping. 
