Remembering history through culture
The largest statue of young Mao Zedong in China
Mao Zedong, also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which he ruled as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976.
Situated at the head of Orange Island in Changsha, China, the Mao Zedong Youth Art Sculpture is based on the image of Mao Zedong as a young man in 1925, highlighting the great man’s ambition and vigor as a young man. It is 83 meters long, symbolizing Mao’s age at his death, 41m wide, symbolizing the number of years he led the Chinese Communist Party from the Zunyi Conference to his death, and 32m high, representing Mao’s age when he wrote his poem dedicated to Changsha city.
With its handsome face and profound gaze, the sculpture vividly recreates the image of the young Mao Zedong with his great ambition. The base of the sculpture is a huge mountain, created by the designer as Mao’s broad shoulders; the interior of the sculpture serves as a thematic showroom of Mao and Orange Island, showing the great man of his generation vividly to future generations through high-tech means such as sound, light and electricity.
For more than 10 years, Changsha people and visitors to Changsha have been visiting the head of Orange Island to salute the statue of young Mao Zedong. It has become an important destination for visiting visitors and tourists from home and abroad.
The words of this great military man and strategist still guide every China forward today. His ideas are a banner that tells us that “to serve the Chinese people with all one’s heart and soul is the sole purpose of this army.” On China’s way forward, this sculpture will be a constant reminder/warning to every Chinese to remember history and face it squarely.
Different regional governments have cultural policies regarding history, all of which are designed to record history, culture gives birth to history and history spreads culture. The content of culture is rich and varied, and history is long. “The ‘politics of culture’ is a key part of the ‘contemporary’ construction of contemporary literary studies, but it needs to be mediated by history-form and its interplay in order to constitute a truly productive and universal way of thinking and scholarship. It also gives contemporary literary studies a truly contemporary character. The present is not only a ‘necessary’ consequence of history, it is also fundamentally about how to liberate our ‘future’ by constantly reinterpreting the past.
The Government’s intention in building this sculpture is to remind people of history and to lead them to pay the highest respect and deepest remembrance to the great man who led the Chinese people to change their destiny and the face of their country.