TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A Chinese dissident artist posted seminude statues of Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) and his wife Peng Liyuan (彭麗媛) bound and kneeling behind a major entrance to Chinatown in Los Angeles in late-June.

The artist, Hui Bo (惠波, @huikezhen), who currently resides in the U.S., told Taiwan News that he first started creating statues to protest against Xi's rule in 2020. On June 13, Hui completed shirtless statues of Xi and Peng on their knees and bound with rope around their arms to coincide with Xi's 70th birthday, which falls on June 15.

Hui said that he was inspired by the iron statues of Song Dynasty Chancellor Qin Hui (秦檜) and Lady Wang (王氏), who were depicted as kneeling and with their arms tied behind their backs as they permanently face the tomb of the revered general Yue Fei (岳飛). The statues were created to shame Qin and Wang for betraying Yue and plotting his execution based on false charges of treason and have since been traditionally spat and urinated upon by visitors to the Yue Fei Temple near the West Lake in Hangzhou.

Hui said he decided to make the statues of Xi and Peng after the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. "I think that only through creating the kneeling statues can I express my anger and dissatisfaction," said Hui.

On June 14, Hui first unveiled his statues of Xi and Peng to the public on a giant video billboard in New York City's Times Square. On June 28, he posted a photo showing the statues being displayed with their backs turned to a statue of Sun Yat-sen (孫中山) at the Chinatown East Gate in Los Angeles.

Hui said that a permanent exhibition of the statues will soon be held in Los Angeles. "In order to alert the world and prevent similar pandemic disasters from happening again, the same pandemic memorial plaza will be established in nine other cities in the U.S. for people to mourn," Hui wrote on his Twitter page.