Visualizing Modern China: Image, History, and Memory, 1750–Present Read online

  In crafting these images of Sun Yat-sen, the GMD showed the kind of selectivity that goes into all forms of image-making, particularly when such images are meant to embody changing idealizations of political power. Just as images of Qianlong on his southern tours left out the yurts in order to project an idealized image of imperial majesty that was not a direct representation of the physical reality of those tours, so too did the GMD select images that only told part of the story of Sun’s career in an effort to embody what the GMD hoped would be the new, postrevolutionary relationship between the state and the people: political tutelage under party guidance, not continued revolutionary violence as espoused by the rival Chinese Communist Party. As with the scrolls of Qianlong’s southern tours, what is left out from the monument’s narrative of Sun’s life is as revealing as what is included.

  Reinforcing the notion of Sun Yat-sen as the serene civilian leader is his seated statue, arguably the most remarkable image within the sacrificial hall (Figure 5.7). Sun is seated in a manner that strikes many as resembling the pose of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, dedicated in 1922, which the architect Lu Yanzhi indicated was intentional.21 Indeed, the GMD had made it clear when commissioning the tomb that it wanted the work to impress both foreign and domestic audiences. This statue would present a familiar appearance to foreigners. Statues of the deceased had not been a typical feature of Chinese tombs, where spirit tablets served as the focus of ritual attention instead. Notably, this statue of Sun is wearing the robes of a Confucian scholar instead of his famous “revolutionary outfit,” the modern four-pocketed tunic suit that he designed himself (which instead appears on the sarcophagus).22 Sun appears here serene and confident, with one hand lying calmly on his left knee and the other balled into a fist, also placed on his leg. Perhaps viewers noted the potential power behind the apparently placid demeanor, but with no explicit interpretation provided, viewers could arrive at their own meanings. Unmistakable, however, above it all, shining down on the scene inside the sacrificial hall was the GMD party emblem of the white sun and blue sky, a vivid reminder of the party’s importance (Figure 5.8, website).

  These messages were meant for a much broader audience than anything that appeared in an imperial-era tomb. The Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum was specifically designed to hold more than 50,000 people for state ceremonies that would be held there, for it was through public ceremonies that the GMD hoped to inculcate its desired meanings that would otherwise only be implicit in the images. Imperial ritual had been largely closed affairs, and the imperial family gained power from the fact that it alone could communicate with the imperial ancestors. The ceremonies at the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, on the other hand, were envisioned as huge public events meant to be seen. And while Qianlong’s southern tours were clearly meant to be viewed as well, in this case state power was presented in a manner that differed subtly from the Qing effort to conjure “popular acclamation,” as Michael Chang describes. With the public display of rituals to Sun Yat-sen’s spirit, the GMD was essentially claiming that its power lay in the expansion of the scope of what was considered the new “national family.” Space is insufficient here to provide a detailed description of imperial rituals of ancestor worship.23 But over the course of the Nanjing decade (1927–37), the GMD developed a series of regular ceremonies honoring Sun Yat-sen that, generally speaking, modeled imperial rituals fairly closely. The party utilized ritual bowing instead of the kowtow, but otherwise the GMD members conducted regular “reports” to Sun’s spirit; they read elegies on Sun’s greatness, set up ritual offering tables, etc. The GMD emulated older rituals because these ancestral ceremonies already had a sacred air. More importantly, similar ceremonies were still being practised by private families honoring their own ancestors, which allowed the state to make a more concrete connection with the people who would recognize the validity of these forms of meaningful words and motion. Finally the GMD used them because they were identifiably Chinese, which allowed Chinese official ritual to be differentiated from other forms of official pomp and circumstance that were being re-invented in Europe and elsewhere.

  Figure 5.7 The statue of Sun Yat-sen that appears in the sacrificial hall. The designer of the mausoleum mentioned that the statue was designed to be similar to that of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, which was dedicated in 1922. Note, however, that Sun is depicted wearing the robes of a Confucian scholar with a scroll in his lap. From: Personal collection of Charles Musgrove.

  The key differences between the GMD rituals and those of the “traditional” state (as the GMD called it) were in who performed the rituals and who the audience was. When the GMD performed the rituals to Sun, the audience was the nation. Everyone was supposed to see them and participate vicariously in them. Certainly, the GMD held a privileged position in the rituals for themselves. Party members held the honor of making the reports and oblations to the spirit of Sun Yat-sen, from which they could claim to be led by his guiding will. As such these rituals served a similar legitimizing function that the imperial rituals did for the emperor and his government. However, these rituals were made in plain public view, with cameras recording them for the benefit of the entire nation, which was supposed to learn lessons of proper citizenship and loyalty from the photos (see Introduction, Figure 1.3, as well as website). By opening up the central rituals to public view, the GMD was in fact extending the boundaries of sovereignty. Before, participation in the imperial rituals had defined who had legitimate authority. Only members of the royal household and their appointed officials could participate in the central rites of the state, though local officials and sanctioned organizations, such as lineages, replicated some of them at the local level.24 From the exclusion of other families in the central imperial rituals, these participants gained the authority to rule “all under heaven.” People in Nationalist China, on the other hand, not only could replicate GMD rituals, but could actually see them being performed at the highest levels, and members of the “masses” (organized in officially sanctioned groups) even participated in them.25 Everyone was included in the family of the nation, just as sovereignty ultimately now rested with the people.

  Ultimately, the GMD would mobilize the whole mountain, including the Ming tomb, to glorify the party founder while placing him as the central figure in a reconfiguration of the nation. In July 1929, the national government set up the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Park Management Committee and directed that the highest priority be the “protection of the mausoleum.” The committee would maintain the mausoleum grounds and construct further facilities to enhance them.26 The committee oversaw the construction of lakes, gardens, forests, and numerous pavilions from which to view the “natural” beauty. While beautifying the landscape and providing places to rest as in a traditional garden, the goal here was not to while away an afternoon with poetry. Within the memorial park, people were supposed to “think of the Party Leader’s grand and broad spirit and the difficulties of making revolution. Their thoughts are inspired and encouraged and are not simply entertaining their eyes and ears.”27 To assist in ideological contemplation, a commemoration hall housing Sun Yat-sen relics, a Library of Revolutionary History, and a Sun Yat-sen Culture Institute were added. This new “national park” would also house a special center for studying “real” Buddhism (not the “superstitious” kind that the GMD was concurrently attacking); an observatory with a new, modern telescope imported from Germany; a sports stadium and training complex; a martyrs cemetery and shrine; as well as special tombs for other important leaders. Nature, science, physical fitness, religion, loyalty, sacrifice, and many other key ideals were intentionally placed under the aegis of Sun Yat-sen’s watchful spirit on Purple Mountain.

  Not least of these ideals were Chinese history and culture, now seen to be embodied by the Ming tomb, which was to be renovated and preserved. Zhu Yuanzhang thus took his place in what amounted to a necropolis devoted to the ancestors of modern Chinese nationalism, particularly as represented by the GMD. Modest ceremon
ies were conducted at the tomb to commemorate this “national hero,” but it was overwhelmingly clear which tomb dominated the landscape: it was Sun Yat-sen’s mausoleum that was visible from miles away. The vast majority of visitors made Sun’s tomb their primary destination, and only some detoured to the Ming tomb.

  Reverence and Contestation

  Monuments have a habit of taking on a life of their own after the designers and builders are (supposedly) finished with them. This is particularly true of monuments meant for widespread public consumption. Distinct and unintended collective memories accrete to public spaces when actual uses defy prescriptions. For example, the Lincoln Memorial began as a monument to unity and the (mis)perception that the United States’ racial problems had been resolved, but unintentionally turned into a locus for continuing social protest. Under conditions of censorship and martial law in Nanjing, the GMD hoped to preserve the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Park as a place for the reverent learning of the lessons of “political tutelage.” It was not intended to become a place for questioning authority; but as it gained power as a national symbol, that is exactly what happened.

  Throughout the Nanjing decade numerous people went to the mausoleum to pay their respects in the proper manner prescribed by the GMD. In fact, virtually all nationally significant gatherings that were held in either Nanjing or Shanghai, from party congresses and legislative sessions to product exhibitions and national sports meets, began with a ritual visit to the mausoleum, where officials made an offering and people paid their respects. The requisite visit usually culminated in a group photograph taken on the steps. Meanwhile, domestic and foreign tourists and visitors paid homage at the site and most sang its praises. For example, in 1929, a correspondent for the English-language North China Herald wrote that the mausoleum was impressive and that “all who have seen it agree on its beauty.”28

  From time to time, however, protestors managed to co-opt the site, most dramatically in an attempted suicide staged on December 27, 1935. Earlier in the year, Japanese forces, which already controlled Manchuria, extended their influence over north China by establishing a de facto government in eastern Hebei Province. On that day in December, General Xu Fanting, Chief of Staff for the First Army Corps in Xi’an, stood in front of the seated statue of Sun Yat-sen in the sacrificial hall and read aloud a text calling for the National Government to take a firm stand against Japanese aggression. He recited an ode, which read in part, “Visiting your mausoleum, my heart is sad. Crying in the mausoleum, I have no tears left. Worshipping at the Party Leader’s mausoleum, every inch of liver and intestines is broken. To die without a general [who will lead the fight against the Japanese], this is most shameful.” Then he moved out of the hall to the terrace in front of the steps, perhaps the most visible location in the entire city of Nanjing, where he drew a short sword and cut his stomach open. Guards immediately called for an emergency team to take him to a nearby hospital, where he eventually recovered. This act was a protest against the GMD leadership in general and its policy of appeasement in particular, but it also clearly illustrates how even those who were critical of the GMD came to respect the symbols of nationhood that it had constructed. It also served as a valuable reminder that symbols are more easily constructed than controlled, particularly when the central figure of the monument was one as contradictory as Sun Yat-sen.

  Conclusion

  After 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continued to treat the mausoleum with great respect. It was well maintained, even through the Cultural Revolution, and dignitaries who visited Nanjing often paid their respects. The CCP consistently argued that it remained the true inheritors of Sun’s legacy, as opposed to the GMD, which the CCP claimed had abandoned many of Sun’s principles and fled with Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan. Once again, though, the meaning of the site’s monumentality changed. Sun’s tomb almost took on the role that Zhu Yuanzhang’s tomb had played for the GMD—it represented a site for the commemoration of an important national hero, but one who was considered far less important than the CCP’s own founding icon, Mao Zedong. People who visited Sun’s tomb did not usually perform the ritual bows, nor did they present reports or offerings. They respectfully took off their hats, but generally they came to just look upon the images of the man. Sometimes, important people would say a few measured words in praise of Sun, a reflection of the old rituals.29 There was still a feeling of reverence at the site, but the more sacred spaces of the People’s Republic were constructed in Beijing, not least of which was Mao’s own mausoleum in Tiananmen Square, where his remains were displayed after his death in 1976.

  We tend to think of monuments as grand structures where visual elements are dominant, and this certainly applies to most intentional monuments built in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which still dominate the landscapes of capitals around the world today. But when looking at how monumentality changed in Nationalist Nanjing during the 1920s and 1930s, the relationship between visual and ritual elements of monumentality is more readily apparent. In many ways, monumentality in China before the late nineteenth century was strikingly different from that of other parts of the world at the time. Imperial-era monuments could be grand structures, but the emphasis at architectural sites was more on moving through various structural elements, as large edifices often lay obscured behind gates and walls. Access to powerful spaces was strictly limited and through the limitations, elite status was defined. With the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, however, there was a clear emphasis on the visual aspects of the tomb. The mausoleum was built in a highly visible location, with what was for Chinese tomb architecture a new emphasis on the stone representations of the deceased. Previous conventions and taboos were dramatically discarded, while power was primarily conveyed through visual means.

  Nevertheless, power was still conveyed through movement as well. Visitors, who now could be anyone, climbed the steps of Sun’s mausoleum; they moved through the sacrificial hall and even walked around his sarcophagus. They also performed distinct rituals: from outright offerings to removing hats that also added to the sacred air of the place. The GMD intended such movements to convey messages about the importance of revering the nation, as well as about their own political party. Yet, the movements and interactions that took place there also had the ability to change the meanings of the site, as protests and other nonprescribed uses created alternative sources of memory: in visiting, one did not just see what the GMD wanted to be seen, for on ascending to the summit of the stairs, one’s mind might involuntarily be drawn to the story of the selfless general who cut his own torso to inspire resistance to GMD policies. And so inevitably, the nature of the monuments changed at Purple Mountain, just as they have at monuments everywhere, though we aren’t always conscious of those changes.

  In this chapter, we have also reflected on how images are selectively constructed to convey political ideals, regardless of whether the constructors are imperial-era monarchs or twentieth-century political parties. One question to consider is: Was there really a difference in the way that visual images conveyed power in these cases? For example, Michael Chang tells us that Qianlong’s ritualized movement through the realm was a spectacle that was designed in part to make the emperor visible to his subjects. So was the GMD really engaging in something new when they built a monument to Sun Yat-sen that was “meant to be seen” by all? I would say that the main difference between the emperor’s visual displays and those of the GMD lay in the nature of the invitation to view. Qianlong’s highly visible parade of power on the southern tours invited subjects to view and be awed by imperial authority. The GMD invitation also hoped to awe its viewers with the power of the modern nation-state that it claimed to lead. However, to make the GMD conception of power palatable to a generation that believed the people should be sovereign, that invitation to view had to give people the sense that they would be empowered in that nation-state, even as the party insisted that the sovereign people needed to be educated first. Again, the notion of the “family-state�
� was a useful one. As a member of the national family, one did not just watch, but one also participated in the rituals that made the family unit sacred. And eventually the youthful members of the family would one day take the lead themselves. The question for the GMD, as to some extent it was for Qianlong, was whether or not the people would accept the invitation to view these power displays the way that the image-makers hoped they would. In this chapter we have seen that in some ways they did, and in other ways people applied their own meanings to the images in defiance of official expectations.

  notes

  A modified version of this chapter was published as “Monumentality in Nanjing’s Sun-Yatsen Memorial Park,” Southeast Review of Asian Studies 29 (2007): 1–19.

  1. Alois Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin,” Trans. Kurt W. Foster and Diane Ghirardo, Oppositions 25 (1982): 20–51. Wu Hung, Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).