773 Soviet Union Factory

Don't read this if you give less than two cares about historical sites. It's for safe keeping, because I wrote this beautiful essay for MY FAVORITE FUTURE CLASS APUSH and realized it was off topic. 

773 Soviet Union factory, Chengdu, China

Presently known as the Chengdu Eastern Music Park

I went to the Chengdu Eastern Music Park to see a traditional art gallery, not a festival of old men playing harmonicas and Michael Jackson poses frozen in stone. I saw both, along with a solid row of nightclubs, and I had the pleasure of getting a stuffed banana keychain and a shot of excitement when I realized that the visit would also fulfill part of this assignment – and so I began to actually pay attention.

The oversized walkway between two large, industrial-looking buildings held the décor - the wooden duck fountain displays and marble walled boutiques (and clubs) literally do not even scratch the surface of the dormant factory. Behind the quaint shops tower walls covered in graffiti, mainly Marxist propaganda, declaring “UNITY IS STRENGTH.” Suspiciously large pipes and valves crawl up and down the concrete, and a couple steps past them reveal … a refurnished garage.     

The garage is the factory museum, where Soviet history is preserved in a few poster boards and picture frames. The resurrection artists of the area called their project “Reincarnation 2012” and claim (on one of their poster boards) that the construction of the park over the exhausted remains of the factory is like a “phoenix from the ashes.” As any proud Chinese would have written, the people of this republic should be proud to “find the glorious dream and gain strength from the history.” Then again, at least in my experience, direct translations in China have never been entirely accurate.

What actually happened is described in Go China’s and Country Data’s websites. It is true that a dormant factory was transformed into a musical night party scene, but the bigger picture is not in the festive jazz bars. Under China’s First Five Year Plan in the 1950s, a Soviet aid program invested in intensive projects to develop China’s economy. Aid was provided to 156 major industrial projects, mostly directed to furthering production of coal, steel, military equipment, and basic chemicals. Apparently, the 773 Soviet Union factory was one of these projects.

The only things that strike me as worthy of deeming “emotional connections” are the cleanliness of the park and the legitimate art gallery. From my past three visits, I always remembered my motherland as a foggy land with too many people, and hence sanitation and basic hygiene were often lesser priorities than putting food on the table. When I spend the majority of my time in China smelling pee, poo, or stinky tofu, walking into a brand new park is both a pleasant surprise and huge relief. Even the museum-garage is scrubbed clean of rust. Also, for the first time, I viewed entire exhibits of art that had zero contemporary, abstract minimalism to which American museums seem to have a strong attraction. Being exposed to so much art that I always respected and followed made me giddy and appreciative to the disciplines of this country.

But that is as far as my appreciation can go. I might have felt a few sparks of awe that the escalator I lazily mounted might have been a staircase to a captain’s command platform, but I have yet to give many cares for history. I leave that to this class, which I heard could be pretty influential, especially under Mr. Eby’s direction.