Red Wall – the Legacy of Contemporary China
By Pok Chi Lau
As an overseas Chinese, born in British Hong Kong and having moved to America at the age of 19, I was distanced an outsider during the 10-year Chinese Cultural Revolution. Amid the most tumultuous decade of recent Chinese history, News reporting of corpses floating down the Pearl River, drowned and half-eaten by sharks to Hong Kong. The heat of the tumultuous movement seethed in Guangzhou, a city of 8 million, 5 hours north of Hong Kong. My naivety clouded its severity, as I wanted to visit my grandfather before I left for America. My parents advised me not to travel to China, reasoning that it would jeopardize my entry to the United States, my education and career in the West. I never saw the Cultural Revolution, or my grandfather.
In 1979, I made my first journey to China. In Guangzhou, I documented the living environments of my relatives and their friends. I found the environment and the inhabitants to be so foreign, yet frighteningly familiar. We shared a common dialect of Cantonese but our minds were far apart. People were tight-lipped, locked in their repressive society. I destined family shrines outside the city. They were used for Chairman Mao worshiping and persecution. Much influenced by the Soviets, Mao doctrines denounced “bad” traditions and Mao’s own opponents as anti-revolutionary factions in China’s new society. Chairman Mao and his followers utilized political movements as subversive actions to grab power. As I roamed the streets of Guangzhou, my eyes were greeted by starkness. The walls and pillars were whitewashed. There was no trace of political movements. Stores remained mostly closed. What ideology and propaganda were so powerful? Why won’t people talk about the millions died of starvation and killed in factional conflicts? Why were people sent away to distant poor farms, and after a decade, most didn’t return home? Why were people so desperate? My only knowledge of this horrific history, at that time, came from books, journals and magazines. Not until 2000 I interviewed a few refugees who climbed mountains and some swam to Hong Kong.
Beginning in the 80s, The Chinese Communist Party decided to grant the people economic freedom to get out of poverty. Opening her doors to the outside, the whole nation is in a contest to be new and wealthy. Renovation and rebuilding reveal the remnants of the Cultural Revolution in the old parts of town.
Weathered doors, pillars, and walls with paint flaking, unveiling layers of propagandistic slogans and Chairman Mao’s poems, lingering like bloody nightmare. In the summer of 2006, I photographed a resurfacing slogan at the top of a five-meter-tall pillar, “Long Live Chairman Mao’s Thoughts.” As I came down the ladder, a 70-year-old man, skinny cheek and bones, rose from a canvas reclining chair and said, “In those years, these streets were a sea of red.” In slow motion, he resumed his reclined position and closed his eyes. I wondered what he had witnessed, and how his dreams had haunted him?
Several months later, I looked for him for a possible interview. I came back to the same pillar, only to find a couple of bicycles parked where he sat. I asked around but no one knew of him. Advertisements had covered the slogans. Others were whitewashed by paint, to be presentable during the Olympic Games. A new glory of China has emerged.
