on Watermelon 1968-

When the art critic and poet John Yau invited me to participate in a group show titled, “Home Cooking” and told me the theme of the show was Asian food, that triggered my memory and brought me right back to my childhood in China. I grew up in China under the communist regime. In 1968, soon after the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” started I was separated from my parents and sent to rural farmland in Anhui Province and forced to labor and be “re-educated”. Food was scarce at the time. Before I was sent away my mother managed to get a big watermelon. She cut it in half, my sister and I each had a half. We ate it with a spoon. Watermelon 1968 is the memory of that moment.

• Ying Li