"This is good grain!" cries the old peasant.
-Rent Collection Courtyard (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1968)
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 II. Examining the Rent
|
|
"This is good grain!" cries the old peasant. -Rent Collection Courtyard (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1968) |
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.