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 V. Forcing the Payment
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A mother is torn away from her baby so that Liu can indulge his special delight - fresh human milk. —Rent Collection Courtyard (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1968) |
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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?