Lianhuashan Park

This guide to Lianhuashan Park in Shenzhen opens with a bronze statue that sat locked in a warehouse for years after its sculptor finished it in the late 1990s. It follows what happened after Deng Xiaoping died in February 1997, when more than a dozen Chinese cities applied to honor him with a public statue and every application was refused, since China had no precedent for enshrining a leader so soon after death. The design traces back to a 1992 photograph taken when Deng, eighty-seven and out of formal office, traveled south to argue publicly that reform needed to move faster, over the objections of conservatives in Beijing.