Kui Hua Zi: A Souvenir of China

Fiona Liu
→BFA ILL 2027

Ai Weiwei 艾未未, Kui Hua Zi (Sun Flower Seeds), 2009, sculpted and painted by hand; lidded glass jar. Courtesy of the RISD Museum, Providence, RI

To construct an argument that repeats the precedent thesis, that retells relevant historic contexts already cited in the precedent thesis, or to reaffirm Ai Weiwei’s Kui Hua Zi as a satire on the Maoist society of China would inevitably lead to a narrowed perspective which sees China as the mere epitome of a billion imported porcelain sunflower seeds. Therefore, my essay intends to question the Western academic rhetoric upholding the “legitimate” and “credible” understanding of Kui Hua Zi as a social criticism of the absurdity of Cultural Revolution ideologies, founded on the premise of Ai Weiwei’s long-established fame or notoriety as a critic of Chinese politics and thus it must be his intention to propose yet another criticism. Afterall, the artist witnessed and survived the Cultural Revolution and suffered the persecution of intellectuals along with his father, Chinese poet Ai Qing, who by then was deemed a “class enemy” infected with “bourgeois culture.” Such experiences shape him into “a tool that the West uses to insult down China” and provide lenses through which Western academia examines Kui Hua Zi to define it as an allusion to the Maoist era’s havoc.¹ However, the canonization of the definition of an artwork, by consensus or by the authoritative artist himself, will lead to suppression of the democracy of debate and disagreements—all works of art are inherently debatable. Adherence to a canonized interpretation threatens to “fix” the complexity of art, culture, politics, and identity and Kui Hua Zi will lose its meanings as a symbol of kinship, intimacy, nostalgia, and as a souvenir of China that reveals a comprehensive and nuanced history.

Like most native Chinese, I am well acquainted with the presence of sunflower seeds on the palms of hands, on couch arms, on dinner tables served with other traditional dishes on the day of the Chinese New Year when all the relatives gather for the festival meal. Plates of cooked and flavored sunflower seeds cracked when bitten down between the teeth, bits of flavor falling upon tongues; we shared the snack as our family recalls grandparents and great grandparents sharing sunflower seeds likewise. The sharing of sunflower seeds weaves generations together, as does the Chinese New Year, and the epochal transition from the Old China to the New, told by the elders to the youths. They told us fragmented stories of dust, closed eyes, children’s clapping when a Japanese plane roared overhead because they did not know what it was, more dust. They told us of a broadcast declaring the start of the People’s Republic of China with a dialect, and soon someone arose from the dining table and began imitating that dialect. Father returning with the news of confiscated land. School, the view of dawn on the way to school, the rumors at school about “bad class backgrounds,” everyone avoiding us. Mother returning with tears after they accused her of being the wife of a capitalist and the daughter of a landlord. Dust. The present.

Mao Zedong and the Communist leaders promised to rid Chinese society of class division, landlordism, and injustice—an almost surreal promise that illuminated hope and a shared optimism that united all into one collective, reckless, invincible force fighting to build the ideal socialist society. Being summoned to the Cultural Revolution, the collective force proved itself essential, for a nation required the power of the collective for defense and evolution; yet devastating, for no society could afford the cost of such internal violence that resulted in the deaths of millions and brutalization of more. The driving force of the revolution, the young Chinese students, themselves inexperienced revolutionaries, formed Red Guard units and targeted anyone deemed infected with anti-revolutionary, reactionary, or bourgeois thoughts and capable of spreading them. “Enemies are among us.”² The socialist state at her infancy needed a thorough purge for her to grow big and strong. The purge lasted from 1966 to 1969, when the Party declared the revolution a victory. During these years, implacable beatings and public humiliations took place, dedicated to the revenge for oppression by the old society and for undermining the socialist utopia. “Beating people felt addictive,” for it inflated a sense of authority. It empowered and convinced the young revolutionaries that they possessed a world-changing might and the strength to hold up the future of the nation.³ The future, however, held the weight of millions of deaths.⁴ While the deaths and destruction were in the aftermath, the witnesses of the campaign, such as my father and other elders in my family, only remembered the zeal and the unprecedented strength they felt as the thousands bonded into one with the affirmation that a better China awaited once they had destroyed all obstructions.

Under the faith of Mao, the people of China represented themselves with the humility of sunflower seeds: humble, small, seemingly insignificant yet persistently present in daily lives, reflecting the role of the people in Chinese society as essential, their power measured by multitudes. In Kui Hua Zi, Ai displays one billion sunflower seeds made of porcelain, a medium that exclusively alludes to China. Each seed is individually sculpted and painted, and merges into one solid, black-and-white, and homogeneous substance where individuality is lost in the collective entity and instead expresses the power of visual harmony and the multitude.

“Should the victims of such a revolutionary craze, such as Ai Weiwei and my family be used by the West as weapons to demonize China, their tears as paint to portray the country as hopelessly evil?”

The porcelain sunflower seeds as a work of art are only powerful when grouped, mass-displayed, piled in a glass jar as opposed to being a scattered few. The multitude of seeds can exert no power unless unified, just like how sunflowers are unified by the sun. Regardless of their location, they all salute to the east, where the fiery planet ignites the horizon.

Mao, lasting as the red sun, was followed by the patriotic youths of the revolutionary era as frantically as blindly, believing that they were building a brighter future. My family recalled this decades later, retelling this blood-stained history on New Year’s Eve, the night that we celebrate our cultural and historical heritage and the identity of the revolutionary generation as the sharing of our meal and the sunflower seeds united the household. The symbol of the sunflower seeds embodies unity, despite its unity developing from the foundation of a complex history: a unanimous war, a united force, a collective goal, a common enemy. A generational tale, a lasting tradition, a unified nation, all at the expense of brutality, bloodshed, and the remote yet affirmative hope that the society will improve and the people will grow strong.

Should the victims of such a revolutionary craze, such as Ai Weiwei and my family, the former the son of an intellectual and the latter descendants of landlords and regional authorities accused as “capitalists,” be used by the West as weapons to demonize China, their tears as paint to portray the country as hopelessly evil? To my family, the Cultural Revolution was only the culmination of accumulating agony in the hearts of the patriotic youth, knowing that they must defeat forces which threaten the life of the New Republic and her people whose days under monarchical and landlord oppression had just ended. It was the Red Guard soldiers following the order of their Great Leader; it was their Great Leader leading the nation down a path he deemed victorious. The revolutionaries had hoped for and fought the revolution so desperately, as the elders in my family said, because of all the past hardships that they could endure no longer: poverty, famine, chaos, oppression, war, deaths, the corrupt Qing dynasty, the tumultuous era of warlords, the Japanese invasion, the threatening West, the chaotic Civil War. Yet even in the worst of times, people shared sunflower seeds: parents offered them to starving grandchildren, neighbors offered them to one another, soldiers offered them to their comrades upon their arduous march, and such generous gifts soothed their sorrows. Sorrow has united the revolutionary generation. Mao has united the revolutionary generation. Today the descendants of the revolutionary generation share in their remembrance of this complex chapter of Chinese history, marked with anguish yet also great revolutionary zeal and patriotism.

Hence, instead of seeing Ai Weiwei’s Kui Hua Zi as a satire on the repression of individuals and the destructive power of the unification of the furious mob under the idolatry of Mao, I understand Kui Hua Zi as an intimate souvenir of China. Each seed encapsulates the joy of the festival night and the enjoyment of the meal, the bond between generations consolidated by the sharing of the seed, and the remembrance of Mao and his complex legacy of the establishment of the New China and the destruction of the Old. The revolutionary zeal, stemming from the empowerment of the masses with the authority to challenge, to fight, to eradicate alleged enemies, mixed with the pain of the persecution and profound empathy for the furious young revolutionaries fighting for their distant, unreachable Maoist faith, only return as we eat and eat the sunflower seeds.

Fiona Liu wants to see Truth.

NOTES

Fan Jiayang, “Ai Weiwei’s Memoirs: Refusing to Become a ‘Chess Pawn’,” The New York Times, 2021, https://cn.nytimes.com/culture/20211102/1000-years-of-joys-and-sorrows-ai-weiwei/.
Carma Hinton, Morning Sun, documentary, 2003. morningsun.org.
Hinton, Morning Sun.
World Peace Foundation, “China: the Cultural Revolution,” Mass Atrocity Endings, 2016, https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2016/12/14/china-the-cultural-revolution/.