Mr. Liu Shiming is an outstanding national artist who spent many years with the people and experienced people’s lives at the underprivileged level, and his works have strong folk art characteristics. The large sculpture “Splitting the Mountains to Let the Water Flow” (1958), now placed in Dongfeng Park, Baoding, Hebei Province, is one of Mr. Liu’s early masterpieces.
This work,“Splitting the Mountains to Let the Water Flow”, is a revolutionary romantic and realistic portrayal of a powerfully muscled northern man with his legs spread wide and his arms pushing aside a mountain as the water flows beneath his feet. This majestic large-scale sculpture fully demonstrates the heroic spirit of the Chinese people during the Great Leap Forward period, when they were splitting mountains and diverting water, fighting against nature, which had a huge social impact at the time. This work is also one of the important works representing the major historical events in modern China. In 1960, the government of Hebei Province was moved by the image of this vigorouly spirited and highly motivated peasant, a man with a towel tied around his head and shorts which was more like a man of Hebei Central Plain, a Baoding man to be exact, whose image is a great example of the spirit of Yanzhao area and the positive spirit of the people in Baoding. As a result, the Baoding municipal government collected the work and has preserved it to this day.
It is a great honour for us that Mr Liu Shiming worked for three years at Baoding Mass Culture and Art Museum. During his work in Baoding, he went deep into the grassroots of society to experience life, researched and discovered Baoding folk culture and arts, and created a large number of excellent works such as the “Old Man Playing a Ball Game”, “The Drought Fighting”, and “On the Road to Langfang”. He also acted as an art tutor for Baoding Mass Culture and Art Museum, cultivating a large number of art creative talent for Baoding and also making outstanding contributions to the prosperity of Baoding’s arts and cultures.
Nearly half a century has passed, and Mr. Liu Shiming’s large sculpture “Splitting the Mountains to Let the Water Flow” has been inspiring and motivating generations of Baoding people, and the spirit of reform and exploration reflected in this timeless and immortal work is our precious spiritual treasure. We, the people of Baoding, love it, are familiar with it and recognise it. It has become a new coordinate and a business card for this city of the Yanzhao area, a city of humanities and outstanding people, and it will continue to encourage us, the people of Baoding, to forge ahead on the road to building a Baoding of strength, a Baoding of charm and a Baoding of harmony!
Finally, I would like to thank Mr. Liu Shiming once again for his love for the people of Baoding, and wish Mr. Liu good health and all the best. We look forward to more and better masterpieces from Mr. Liu to hand down!
Bu Genwang: Director of Baoding Forestry and Parks Bureau