This is “outsourcing” gone mad.
On Monday, Aug. 22, tourists and Washingtonians got their first up-close look at the memorial to the U.S.civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The site opened without fanfare to kick off a week of celebrations ahead of Sunday’s official dedication.
The memorial sits on the National Mall between memorials honoring Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. It includes a 30 ft-tall sculpture of King and a 450 ft-long granite wall inscribed with 14 quotations from his speeches.
The sheer size of the sculpture of King sets it apart from nearby statues of Jefferson and Lincoln, which are both about 20 ft. tall, though inside larger monuments.
But get this: The Martin Luther King memorial was made in China.
Malcolm Moore reports for the UK’s Telegraph, August 22, 2011, that the MLK memorial is the only memorial on the Mall that does not honour a president or fallen soldiers. Standing in the shadow of the Washington Monument, the statue shows Dr King emerging from a mountain of Chinese granite with his arms crossed and is called The Stone of Hope.
However, there has been controversy over the choice of Lei Yixin, a 57-year-old master sculptor from Changsha in Hunan province, to carry out the work. Critics have openly asked why a black, or at least an American, artist was not chosen and even remarked that Dr King appears slightly Asian in Mr Lei’s rendering.
Mr Lei, who has in the past carved two statues of Mao Tse-tung, one of which stands in the former garden of Mao Anqing, the Chinese leader’s son, carried out almost all of the work in Changsha.
Dr King’s son, Martin Luther King III, has defended the outsourcing. “I have seen probably 50 sculptures of my dad, and I would say 47 of them are not good reflections,” he said, to USA Today.”This particular artist: he has done a good job.”
However, Ed Dwight, a sculptor in Denver, said Dr King would be “turning over in his grave” if he knew his likeness had been conceived by someone living under a Communist regime. “He would rise up from his grave and walk into their offices and go, ‘How dare you?’”
Mr Lei was chosen after the memorial’s fund-raisers observed him at work at a stone carver’s symposium in Minnesota. Amid the criticism, the architects in charge of the project said that they had visited Mr Lei’s studio in Changsha to find he had already carved several versions of the work. He has also prepared a bronze bust of Barack Obama which he intends to gift to the president.
The statue, meanwhile, is 11ft taller than the statues in the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. It is unclear how much money was saved by making it in China.
~Eowyn
This is too bizarre for words. Really. Too. Bizarre.
This world is so doomed, everyday one thing after the other. No ethics in politics look where it is leading us beyond the precipice
I don’t think it even looks like him.
-Dave
I doubt the birds will know the difference. We have statues all over the world, some are seen and admired by millions, others rarely visited, but, since statues don’t speak, what difference does any of that make? I am just curious on how long it will be before Barack Obama issues an executive order to tear down any statue that could remind Americans of their heritage to go along with the hate policy against the Tea Party members.
i guess plagiarizing does pay.
Bigger than the others, how come? If the African Americans want the European Americans to accept them they need to quit playing the race card, I think most of us have a long time ago. Creating a monument that overwhelms the Presidents is another burr under the saddle that will keep this thing festering.
And now that Obama is going to get a monument of his own from China, Remember Dick Clark and the new phrase Payola, I suppose we can give up on the feds giving American manufacturers a REAL incentive to JUST COME BACK. Maybe the Tea Party should make him a bigger one, then we would have a bigger chip in the game.
It is fitting. People who call themselves African-Americans are not fully vested in this country.
Looks like A Buddha.
Ahh so, it is Martin Ruther King.
King did look Chinese. See following:
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0oG7kPKY1ZOLVAAhcNXNyoA?ei=UTF-8&p=martin%20luther%20king&fr2=tab-web&fr=yfp-t-373
Less statues or talk about statues, more viable and normal candidates !
When in doubt, vote only for Joe Publics who are worth no more than 200K, also see the pledge/questionairre below and ask your MP candidate or Assemblyman candidate, current MP or Assemblyman to sign with a cam taking down the signing in the presence of as many media reporters or people as possible :
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1914864390044&set=o.318515515322&type=1&theater
Just 1 MLK statue will do, and it needs to be on the Rockies, We need a NA Red American and Latino up there too. Replace or add?
This former nation called the United States of America has now BRAIN DEAD SHEEPLE as its occupants. Many are illegal invaders. A REVOLUTION should have begun here many years ago, but BRAIN DEAD means what it says.
The idiot in the W. H. proves my point. We have high treason traitors in the Senate, Congress and all other Fed Gov offices.
It is far too late to save our beloved nation now. It is YOUR FAULT you who are in this stupid nation of MORONS.
This MLK statue being made in China our next WW lll enemy nation is only one more fact as far as what I speak.
Why do we waste millions of federal taxpayer dollars annually on the National Endowment for the Arts only to have a once in a lifetime opportunity to gave the King Memorial made in China by a sculptor who worships a dictator (Mao) who King would have opposed with every fiber in his being.
This is sad and pathetic. What’s left outsourcing US military equipment and uniforms to China or India?
Isn’t Lei Yixin Chinese for Richard Nixon?
No it’s not — assuming your question is actually a serious question.
Hell it is fittting. King was a damn communist at heart, an adulterer,a cheat, liar and “usedZ” his peace through nonviolence as a front. He take as full advantage of every killing of a black persom irregardless of guilt as sarah brady and her ilk in congress, schumer, pelosi, boxer, and others do about gun killings today. He used those terrible acts to further his scoialistic verging on communistic views like a good PR man does today.
He is/was and never will be a fitting moral person to hold up as some saint. What his family anf followers have done to his image is shameful and embrrassing to everyone especially blacks.
The only thing to look forward to today is the feral black youth running wild and “mobbing” stores and attacking white people. It will be a grand time when average normal americans of all colors start gunning these “flash mobs” down in the streets!
If I heard correct, the savings was to the tune of $6 million dollars.