Honoring Lin Zexu: Politician, Activist, Man of Fuzhou

Mimi Wong

For the typical New Yorker, the daily routine of walking through the city allows little time for sightseeing. Even tourists do not always bother to stop at every plaque or fountain or monument that seem to overrun every street, corner and square. A statue is just a statue — just another long-dead historical figure or forgotten mayor. Yet the installation of any new public monument arises out of a very deliberate and conscious decision.

In November 1997, Chinatown welcomed the addition of a new statue memorializing Lin Zexu, a Qing dynasty commissioner celebrated for his efforts in the Opium War. The height of Lin’s career peaked after he managed to successfully confiscate and destroy three million pounds of raw opium from European drug lords. Unfortunately, the government banished Lin after the defeated nation was further humiliated and forced to surrender Hong Kong to British control in 1842. But, with the re-annexing of Hong Kong some 150 years later, recognition for Lin’s efforts has resurfaced. In an article in The Los Angeles Times printed earlier that year prior to the statue’s erection, journalist Tempest Rone described how historians and politicians alike herald Lin Zexu as “a brilliant, progressive Confucian administrator [who] launched one of the world’s first anti-drug campaigns.”

Indeed, the anti-drug angle has become the focal point of remembering Lin Zexu. At the base of his statue, the message “Say No to Drugs” is inscribed in both English and Chinese. Even though independent civic associations and other non-affiliated individuals were the ones responsible for funding the $200,000 cost, some critics still see the statue as nothing but a political maneuver to win the support of Chinese voters during Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s re-election campaign. In the same year that Lin’s statue was erected, Giuliani invested nothing short of $80 million into initiating his anti-drug plan, for which he has not been forgotten.

The statue of Lin Zexu joins a statue of Confucius, which had previously inhabited Chatham Square alone for more than a decade. While both were designed by the same artist, T.C. Ho, there are some notable differences between the two. While the green marble for the base of Confucius’ statue came from Taiwan, for the base of Lin’s statue, Ho used a red granite mined in Xiamen, a major Fujianese city in China. At 18-feet 5-inches, Lin’s statue rises above that of the Confucius at 16-feet. Lin’s statue was also meticulously placed facing East Broadway, an area sometimes called “Fuzhou Street” because of the predominantly Fujianese population there. Altogether, the materials used, the positioning and the location of the statue were consciously chosen for their symbolic associations. Thus, the planners have ensured that Lin’s Fujian roots are clearly presented.

In that respect, the statue participates in what is known as a “heritage crusade,” a movement in urban planning intended to connect people with their ancestors. The article entitled “Chinatown's Fujianese Get a Statue,” published in The New York Times upon the unveiling of Lin Zexu’s statue, includes an interview with a Fujianese immigrant currently residing in New York. When asked for his views on the statue, he explained his appreciation for the city’s tribute to a historic figure he saw as being representative of his heritage: “Confucius is for all Chinese,” he says. “But Lin Zexu is from Fujian, and that is very meaningful for those of us from Fujian, because there are more of us now in New York¹.” Some, in fact, view the growing Fujianese community as rivaling the Cantonese immigrants who first settled in Chinatown and who currently account for the majority of Chinese-Americans living in the city. The rising population also incurs a certain amount of controversy in that some Fujianese families have be known to pay criminal organizations, such as the infamous Snakeheads, to smuggle them into the country illegally.

Politically, the statue of the mainland, anti-colonialist Lin Zexu challenges the pro-Taiwanese supporters who rally around the statue of Confucius. Once overwhelmingly sympathetic with Taiwan and its struggle to break from China’s Communist Government, the community in Chinatown now tends to identify more with mainland views. The simple difference in height between the two statues is enough to make a statement about the change in guard.

What we discover, then, is that the significance of a statue goes beyond the physical statue itself. A statue is far from being a mere lifeless heap of stone and metal. Our monuments are very much alive with the weight of social, political, and cultural discourse. What we see everyday in passing only scratches the surface of an entire discussion concerned not just with lessons in history but also issues relevant to the here and now.

¹Chen, David W. Chinatown’s Fujianese Get a Statue. The New York Times. Nov 20, 1997.