Ziheng Shen

 

 

 

 

 

This project is about sparrows and Chinese. I tried to reflect on the living and behavior of the public from the “Campaign against Four Pests initiated by the then China’s President Mao Zedong in 1952 as a part of China’s modernization drive.

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The campaign reminds me of the political environment of contemporary China in which high ideological unity has been emphasized. But the biggest victim is the masses in such an environment. This work may provoke the audience to reflect while demonstrating the history that cannot be forgotten. Do we need more courage and different voices to challenge the authority? Perhaps that will produce a better result. Sometimes the public is so easily influenced by the policy or media, or fooled by the interest groups that they would blindly follow others, few of them doubting the policy or the authority. As a result, we could only see what is before us without being aware that we are the biggest victims.