Stages of History | Rent Collection Courtyard

The following text and images are taken from: Rent Collection Courtyard - Sculptures of Oppression and Revolt (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1968).

EXPLANATORY NOTES ON THE SIX PARTS OF THE CLAY SCULPTURE GROUP

Part I. Bringing the Rent

An old man wheels in the grain he has reaped with his own blood and sweat. —Rent Collection Courtyard (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1968)

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