EXPLANATORY NOTES ON THE SIX PARTS OF THE CLAY SCULPTURE GROUP

Part I. Bringing the Rent

Filled with anger, young and old tenants of the big tyrannical landlord, Liu Wen-tsai, come to pay their rents in gram under the watchful eye of the landlord's thugs. Before the liberation, the exaction of rent by landlords lay like a mountain on the peasants. At rent collection time every year, thousands upon thousands of peasants, hungry and cold, were forced to hand over to the landlords rents in grain, not one kernel less despite drought or flood, which they had grown throughout the year with blood and sweat.

Part II. Examining the Rent

For the peasants fleeced in a thousand and one ways by the landlords and their henchmen, the rent collection courtyard was the gateway to hell. The tenants were beaten or kicked viciously even if a tiny blade of grass was found in the grain. One hundred jin of the peasants' good grain put into landlord Liu Wentsai's "flying wheel winnowing machine" would come out only 70 or 80 jin. Feeling the pity of it, a child tries to pick up some grain from the ground, but is struck down by the whip of the landlord's henchman. The indignant grandfather scoops up a handful of grain to reason with the brute, but in the old society in which wolves stalked the land, the poor had no say.

Part III. Measuring the Grain Tyrannical landlord Liu Wen-tsai used oversized measures when he collected rent but undersized ones when he loaned grain. With this trick alone he fleeced an extra 330,000 jin of grain every year from his tenants. A mother with her daughter, carrying a basket of grain which has gone through the "flying wheel winnowing machine", stares at the big measure, swallowing her tears. The peasants used to say, "When we see this measure we tremble all over. It opens its bloody mouth to gulp down our flesh and blood." Anger and hatred rise like burning flames in their hearts.

Part IV. Reckoning the Accounts

Now the accounts are reckoned and the peasants are made to pay. The landlord's bookkeeper runs his fingers over the beads of the abacus. Land rent, house rent, extortionate taxes and levies and the many-times multiplied interest are added up into a debt that costs more than one's life to pay. Liu Wen-tsai, landlord and despot, with prayer beads in his hand but a heart more cruel than a wolf 's, orders an old man's son to be seized on the pretext that the family has not paid all they owed. Ready to burst with anger under this dark,, sunless system, the peasants swear: "There will be a day when we will settle all the accounts of wrongs and hatred with you! We will smash this system to pieces!"

Part V. Forcing the Payment

When unable to pay their rent and debts, the peasants were thrown into the water prison and underground cells of the landlord, or put into the Kuomintang state prison, or pressganged into the army. They were forced to sell their children to keep them from starving. Their families were ruined, homes broken up. This young woman is being dragged away to the manor house to provide the landlord with her milk, forced to leave her new baby to starve to death. In that man-eating society, what family among the labouring millions did not have a story of blood and tears, a deep hatred of class oppression?

Part VI. Revolt

Wherever there is exploitation and oppression, there is resistance and struggle. The landlords' persecution and exploitation arouse strong resistance and resolute struggle on the part of the peasants. The flames of revenge rise higher and higher. If they want to be free, to live, they must make revolution, ready to go through mountains of swords or seas of fire, dare to charge forward, to struggle. The broad masses of the peasants, under the brilliant leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Mao, take up arms and surge forward on the road of revolution, resolved to smash the man-eating system.


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