安仁古镇

About this audio guide

This guide to the clay-sculpted courtyard at Anren Ancient Town near Chengdu tells how, in 1965, sculptors from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts turned landlord Liu Wencai's own courtyard into the Rent Collection Courtyard, one hundred fourteen life-sized clay figures spread across six scenes of tenant farmers handing over their harvest. It follows how the piece became propaganda so raw that visitors reportedly wept, some throwing stones at the landlord's clay double. Within a few years, replicas of the scenes stood in Beijing and Tibet, and workshops in distant Jingdezhen fired smaller ceramic copies by the thousand.