By Michael Ashcraft –
Weiming Chen was doing what artists do, sculpting nudes, when he saw (he was in New Zealand) the Chinese tanks kill hundreds of democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
“I should not care just about the beautiful woman’s body,” he thought to himself at the time. “I should care for human rights. If China no human rights, no freedom. You’re an artist, you’re free. I came to America and built this Liberty Sculpture Park.”
On 36 acres on Interstate 15 near Barstow, CA, Liberty Sculpture Park features an ever-increasing number of sculptures that memorialize the atrocities of communism. Weiming’s next project will be a museum, for which he’s waited five long years for county approval.
A pyramid of skulls underneath the sickle and hammer of the Soviet Union commemorates the path of destruction left by those who are instituting utopia. It is surrounded by barbed wire, not to keep people out, but to symbolize the keeping of people in.
(Such is the socialist ideal: North Korea shoots to kill anyone who tries to escape the nation, a razor-wire crested wall kept people inside East Berlin, and so on. Anyone brash enough to speak his mind must be imprisoned.)
The Tank Man sculpture depicts the Pullitzer Prize runner up journalistic photo of 1989 in which an Associated Press reporter photographed a single man with no weapons standing brazenly in front of a tank. The tank stopped. It became an icon for peaceful protest.
As might be surmised, Weiming is not liked by the Chinese government. In fact, his 3-story sculpture of Chairman Xi Jingping in the form of the Covid virus, which escaped the Wuhan lab, was burned to the ground by arsons the US government said were Chinese agents.
Weiming re-erected the sculpture, this time in steel. The previous was fiberglass. It’s now burn-proof.
With free entrance, Liberty Park is a must-see, celebrating freedom over oppression worldwide. It seems eerily strange then that the County of San Bernardino fails to approve plans for the construction of the museum. Is the County stonewall? Has the County received funds, favors or instructions from agents of China to forestall approval?
A county spokesman could not be reached to comment at the time of publishing.
Weiming was born in Hangzhou, China, and worked for the Central Government’s Sculpture Department but stifled under the policy that all his sculpture had to praise the government. He wished for freedom and successfully immigrated to New Zealand in 1988.
Now he’s in America. He’s more than just a critic who spouts off opinion from the safety of America. He’s a bona fide freedom fighter. In 2011, he traveled to Syria to fight alongside Free Syrian Army rebels fighting in the Syrian uprising.
The Liberty Sculpture Park is free of charge. It is located 3570 Yermo Road, Yermo, CA 92398.
