THE LAND OF THE FREE
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By John Wease
AST YEAR, AFTER DRIVING PAST MANY TIMES, I visited the Liberty Sculpture Park in Yermo. I wrote an article about it that appeared in the May 2023 edition. The sculptures are very large and incredibly detailed. The common theme is the struggle for freedom against communism, especially the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Artist, Weiming Chen, a native of China, immigrated to New Zealand before the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Since the massacre, he has dedicated his life, and his art to the struggle for freedom. The sculptures are easily seen from the Interstate 15, and the park was located there for the very reason that the massive art would be visible to the millions that pass by. To fully appreciate the details, one must visit the Liberty Sculpture Park and see it up close. The giant 64 represents the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. The iconic photo of the man with a briefcase defiantly standing before a line of Chinese tanks is represented life-sized. The Umbrella Brigade of Hong Kong protesters is very moving, as well as the Swimming for Freedom sculpture. Swimming for Freedom represents the many Chinese mainlanders that attempted to swim to Hong Kong to avoid the Mau Zedong Great Purge. Many drowned or died due to the cold water. In June, I was invited to the unveiling and dedication of Weiming Chen’s latest sculpture. I managed, as well, to get myself invited to watch them move the massive sculpture from the studio in Newberry Springs to the Liberty Sculpture Park. The concrete base, shaped like Mainland China, was constructed at the park. The sculpture is in two parts. The background structure is a massive steel structure that must weigh many tons. In front of this steel structure, representative of a jail or prison, stands a woman with a chain around her neck. She is the “Woman in Chains.” In this age of content warnings for movies, and trigger warnings for books, I probably should include a warning here. If you are one of the rainbows and unicorns and flowers everywhere people, you may want to skip the rest of this article. Perhaps because it represents the real-life plight of one individual, That makes it even more disturbing. I found it disturbing enough that I needed a few months before I could write the article. So, since you are still reading this, here is the story. In the 1970s the CCP was concerned about population 16
January 2024
growth in China. A one child policy was put in place in the late 1970s. As with many cultures, the families there wanted a boy child to carry on the family name. This led to gender specific abortions, infanticide, and abandoned girls ending up in orphanages. Many girl babies ended up adopted in the United States and other countries. It is estimated from hundreds of thousands to possibly several millions of these girls were hidden by their families. These undocumented girls were uneducated and largely unemployable. Parents caught with more children than allowed were subject to fines and even imprisonment. The one child policy was later relaxed in rural areas. Two children would be allowed if the first was a girl or handicapped. This was especially true if the parents were both only children. The skewed population control led to a shortage of women available as wives, especially in poorer, rural areas. This led to an increase in human trafficking of women from poorer areas sold as “wives.” One of these “wives” was purchased by Dong Zhimin around 1998 in Xuzhou, China. The one child policy ended in 2016 but many couples were accustomed to smaller families by then. With an aging population, and a declining number of births there was concern about a future workforce. Mr. Dong proudly posted a video in January 2022 of how he was doing his part. The video showed Dong and his eight children eating their dinner inside his house. Reporters went to his house for more information and found his “wife” outside of a dilapidated shed, barefoot, dirty, and chained by the neck. Her food was in a dish on the ground.
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