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The Forgotten series was created in the only preserved cemetery for Red Guards in China. This cemetery is located in a park in Chong-Qing. It is about 3,000 m2. There are 113 tombs of 500 Red Guards who died between 1967 and 1968 when a revolution broke out in Chong-Qing. They were members of the Chong-Qing 815 Red Guards. The youngest among these guards was merely 14 years old, the oldest 60. Three decades have passed. The horror of the revolution seems so far |
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Tian Tai-Quan is an artist living and working in Chong-Qing, China.
Tian Tai-Quan, Sacrifice No. 30. 120 x 138 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
The Forgotten series was created in the only preserved cemetery for Red Guards in China. This cemetery is located in a park in Chong-Qing. It is about 3,000 m2. There are 113 tombs of 500 Red Guards who died between 1967 and 1968 when a revolution broke out in Chong-Qing. They were members of the Chong-Qing 815 Red Guards. The youngest among these guards was merely 14 years old, the oldest 60.
Three decades have passed. The horror of the revolution seems so far away to people who have been through this macabre period. The younger generations don’t even realize how gruesome that time was. Red Guards’ past fades in people’s memories. There were more than a hundred million Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution, whose history turns out to be so easily forgotten. Those who once swore to protect the country and died for this cause ended up like characters in a dream, like they never really existed.
When I stood among the tombs, underneath which lay these 500 martyrs, seeing their names etched in the tombstones, I could almost hear them scream, see them bleed, as if they were lingering still with no place to go.
The Red Guards may be temporarily forgotten. Only when we learn our lessons from history would tragic events stop happening.
