Photographer’s mission to remember Mao

BEIJING – Thirty-three years after his death, Mao Zedong is still a god to many in China. And you can see him everywhere.

He’s mostly standing, in a military uniform or a long buttoned-up winter coat, sometimes wearing his symbolic little red-starred army hat, usually waving his right arm high up to the air as if giving a victory gesture or ordering his army to march forward. Occasionally you see him posed as a deep thinker with his hands behind the back, or even sitting on a chair looking into some mysterious future.

VIDEO: Mao, Mao everywhere

He mainly stands in big cities’ center squares, overlooking senior citizens doing tai chi in dawn light or children running around in a park; many times he stands in military barracks or factory blocks, supervising his soldiers in exercise and workers on the assembly line; sometimes he waves his big hand in universities, reminding the students of his renowned remark “you youth are the sun at 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., you are the future of the country”; now and then, he makes surprise appearances in a dingy local clinic, a small Sichuan restaurant, or in the middle of a rundown low-rise housing complex.

He’s mostly cement, gray and stiff, sometimes marble, white and spotless, occasionally bronze, yellow and shining.

There are hundreds of these statues of the late founder of the People’s Republic of China across the country. And Cheng Wenjun, an urban sculpture designer and photographer, made it his mission, which he began in 1997, to make a record of every one.

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