Where do you live? 你生活在哪里? IN DAYI COUNTY, a couple of hours drive down a motorway from the city of Chengdu, thecapital of Sichuan Province, Chinese tourists stroll through the meandering courtyards of arural mansion. In the 1950s, soon after Mao seized power, the mansion was turned into amuseum, intended as a showcase of evil. It once belonged to Liu Wencai, a landownersupposedly notorious for ill-treating his tenant farmers. Liu embodied a class despised by Mao,who came to power on the back of a promise to give land back to the peasants. 在大邑县,距离四川省府成都市数小时车程的一个县城里,中国游客漫步于一家乡间宅所那曲折的庭院里。在1950年代,在毛泽东掌权后不久,这栋宅所被辟为了一家博物馆,以作为罪恶的展品。它曾一度归属为刘文彩,作为地主,刘文彩因被断定虐待他自己的长工而臭名昭著。刘文彩代表了为毛泽东所鄙视的那样一个阶级。而毛泽东在掌权后,推动了将土地交还给农民的这样一个承诺的兑现。 In its Maoist heyday the museum was a place of pilgrimage. Red Guards swarmed there forritual denunciations of Liu and his ilk. A high point of their visit was a trip to the waterdungeon, a room with several inches of water covering the floor where Liu had allegedly keptdisobedient farmers. Another was a series of life-size sculptures of peasants and their viciousoppressors. A politically disfavoured curator from Beijings Forbidden City who happened tolook like Liu was forced to stand next to the sculptures as a living Liu Wencai so that visitorscould shout and spit at him, according to Geremie Barm ofAustralian National University. |