Li Zhensheng (photojournalist) and Mission Hill, Boston: Difference between pages

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'''Mission Hill''' is a neighborhood of approximately 18,000 people in [[Boston, Massachusetts]] roughly bounded by Columbus Avenue and [[Roxbury, Massachusetts|Roxbury]] to the south, Longwood Avenue and the [[The Riverway|Riverway]]/[[The Jamaicaway|Jamaicaway]] and the town of [[Brookline, Massachusetts|Brookline]]. It is easternly adjacent to the Boston neighborhood [[Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts|Jamaica Plain]]. It is served by the [[MBTA]] Green Line E Branch and the Orange Line and is within walking distance of the [[Museum of Fine Arts, Boston|Museum of Fine Arts]] and contains about half of the [[Longwood Medical and Academic Area]], home to many world-class medical institutions. Due to these adjacenies, the neighborhood is often struggling with institutional growth taking residential buildings and occupying storefront commercial space. But recent years have seen new retail stores, restaurants and residential development giving the neighborhood a stronger political voice and identity.

[[Image:Ch3-12.jpg|frame|right|Seven men and one woman are executed by firing squad in the cemetery district of [[Huang Shan]] in the northwestern outskirts of Harbin, Heilongjiang Province on April 5, 1968.]]

Mission Hill is an architectural landmark district with a combination of freestanding houses built by early wealthy landowners, blocks of traditional brick rowhouses, and many triple deckers. Many are [[condominium|condominiums]], but there are also some single-family homes.

'''Li Zhensheng''' (born [[September 22]], [[1940]]) is a Chinese photojournalist who captured some of the most telling images from the [[Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution]], or better known as the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which generally lasted from 1966 to 1969.

Up until the late 19th century, much of the area was an orchard and [[puddingstone]] [[quarry]] with large swaths owned by merchants [[Franklin G. Dexter]], [[Warren Fisher]] and [[Fredrick Ames]]. By the early 1900s, the hill was covered in [[triple decker|triple-deckers]]. The neighborhood was also home to a large German population and most of the [[brewery|breweries]] in Boston, many of which are now being converted into loft condominiums.

His employment at the [[Heilongjiang]] Daily, a turned-propaganda newspaper during the revolution, and his decision to wear a red arm band indicating an alliance with Chairman [[Mao Zedong]], allowed him a rare access to scenes which have since been only described in written and verbal accounts.

==Geography==

His recent publication of the book, "Red-Color News Soldier" exhibits in vivid detail both the prolific nature of revolutionary ideals in [[China]] — and more notably — many of the atrocities that occurred during the Cultural Revolution. The Heilongjiang Daily newspaper had a strict policy in accordance with a government dictate that only "positive" images could be published, which consisted mostly of smiling revolutionaries offering praise for Chairman [[Mao Zedong|Mao]]. The "negative" images, which depicted the atrocities of the time, were hidden beneath a floorboard in his house where they sat for over 40-years before he would bring them to public light at a photo exhibit in 1988.

The neighborhood has two main commercial streets: Tremont Street (running north and south) and Huntington Ave. (running east and west). Both have several small restaurants and shops. Mission Hill is at the far western end of Tremont Street, with [[Beacon Hill]] at the far eastern end.

Parker Hill, Roxbury Crossing, the Triangle District, Back of The Hill and Calumet Square are areas within the Mission Hill neighborhood, an official designated neighborhood in Boston

==Early Life==

(as attested by numerous signs prohibiting parking without a sticker which can be purchased only by residents). As such, the distinction between Mission Hill and Parker Hill is blurred, with people referring to the whole area as "on Mission Hill."

Li Zhensheng was born to a poor family in Dalian, which is located in the northeastern province of [[Liaoning]], [[China]]. His mother died when he was three, and his older brother, who was a member of [[Mao Zedong|Mao's]] army, was killed during the [[Chinese Civil War]]. Zhensheng helped his father, who was a cook on a steamship and later as a farmer, until Zhensheng was 10-years-old.

[[Brigham Circle (MBTA station)|Brigham Circle]], located at the corner of Tremont and Huntington the neighborhood's commercial center, with a grocery story, drug stores, bistros, banks and taverns.

Zhensheng quickly rose to the top of his class despite starting school late. He later earned a spot at the [[Changchun]] Film School, where he acquired much of his photographic knowledge. In 1963, he briefly achieved a job at the Heilongjiang Daily, however the Socialist Education Movement soon intervened and he ended up back in the countryside for nearly two years, living with peasants and studying the work of [[Mao Zedong|Chairman Mao]].

One block up the hill from Brigham Circle is Boston's newest park, Puddingstone Park[http://www.missionhillnhs.org/open_space.htm], created when a new $60-million mixed use building was completed in 2002.

==Cultural Revolution==

Zhensheng returned to Harbin just months before the outbreak of the [[Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution]] in the spring of 1966. A lack of photographic film, marauding [[Red Guards (China)|Red Guards]], and a political dictate against photographing the negative aspects of the revolution, reduced Zhensheng to nothing more than a [[propaganda]] functionary. Although, he quickly realized that only people wearing the red-colored armband of the Red Guards, he could photograph without harassment. To achieve this, he founded his own small rebel group at the newspaper.

Atop the hill on Tremont Street is Mission Church [http://www.themissionchurch.com], an [[eponym|eponymous]] landmark building that dominates the skyline of the area.

In his access Zhensheng captured some of the most horrific acts of the [[Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution|Cultural Revolution]]. Among his collection include several dehumanizing tactics used by the [[Red Guards (China)|Red Guards]] to humiliate or degrade alleged counterrevolutionaries. Some of the images depict public displays of "denunciations" where the hair of prominent individuals is shaved in a scattered styles. Other images show people bearing "dunce" hats; people with black paint spread over their faces while wearing signs around their necks that critize their profession or names; and most horrifying Zhensheng captured instances of public executions.

Atop the adjacent Parker Hill is [[New England Baptist Hospital]] and Parker Hill Playground, which is also the highest point in the city where you can observe the panoramic view of [[Financial District, Boston, Massachusetts|downtown Boston]], [[Boston Harbor]], and the [[Blue Hills Reservation|Blue Hills]]. Also nearby is the newly restored Parker Hill Library [http://www.bpl.org/branches/parker.htm], the neighborhood branch of the Boston Public Library [http://www.bpl.org] and designed by architect [[Ralph Adams Cram]] in 1929.

At the height of the [[Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution|Cultural Revolution]], Zhensheng would be plotted against by rivals, publicly denounced, and once more sent back to the countryside in September 1969. He was sent to the "May 7th Cadre School" in Liuhe, a Chinese [[gulag]] where he and his wife, Zu Yingxia, spent two years performing hard labor.

Zhensheng had taken meticulous care of the documented "negative" images he captured while at the newspaper, hiding them beneath a floorboard of his one-room apartment. He attributes the dry atmosphere and mild temperatures of [[Harbin]] to the preservation of the photographic negatives. While he was sent away, Zhensheng entrusted a friend to care for the apartment, and to never reveal the secrets it contained. Zhensheng returned to the newspaper in 1972 as the head of the photography department, and later became a professor at the [[University of Beijing]] in 1982.

[[Image:mission hill thumb.jpg]] [[mission hill.jpg]]

==Red-Colored News Soldier==

Red-Colored News Soldier is a literal translation to the Chinese characters written on the armband Li Zhensheng wore during the Chinese [[Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution|Cultural Revolution]]. Although, he admits he never personally gave his alliance to [[Mao Zedong|Chairman Mao Zedong]], wearing the arm band gave him unprecedented access to historic events, which have since shaped Chinese Culture.

==History==

The book generally covers an era just before the [[Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution|Cultural Revolution]] in 1964 to just after in 1976. It is separated into five chronological sections: 1964-1966 titled "It is right to rebel"; 1966 titled "Bombard the Headquarters"; 1966-1968 titled "The Red Sun in our hearts"; 1968-1972 titled "Revolution is not a dinner party"; and 1972-1974 titled "Die Fighting."

The area takes its name from a small [[Mission (Christian)|mission church]] built by the [[Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer|Redemptorist Fathers]] in 1870. This humble wooden structure was replaced by an impressive [[basilica]] an built from 1876-1910 from [[Roxbury puddingstone]]. The basilica, officially named [[Our Lady of Perpetual Help]] after the [[icon]] of the same name, is still uniformly referred to as "Mission Church", even by its own [[Parish|parishners]]. Due to a sloping foundation of this landmark, the west cross tops its tower at 215 feet; the other spire is two feet shorter. The length of the church is also 215 feet, presenting a perfect proportion.

There was once an adjacent [[Parochial school|parochial school]] and a Catholic [[high school]] administered by the parish, but these have since been closed and sold off. The resulting monies have been used to restore much of the church. The sold buildings are currently planned for luxury condominums.

Zhensheng's "negative" pictures (those which depicted the atrocities of the cultural revolution) were first revealed publicly in March 1988 at a Chinese Press Association's photography competition in Beijing. The show, entitled "Let History Tell the Future" was comprised of twenty images from his collection, and were deemed "counterrevolutionary" under the political dictates of [[Mao Zedong|Chairman Mao Zedong]]. Some of the images included the former governor of [[Heilongjiang|Heilongjiang Province]] having his hair brutally torn out at a [[Red Guards (China)|Red Guard]] rally as a part of dehumanizing [[humiliation]] practice. Chinese Communist Party-controlled newspapers for the first time were seen to use term, "shocked" in headlines.

The neighborhood was once home to large numbers of families of recent [[Immigration|Immigrant]] descent, mostly [[Ireland|Irish]], but also [[Germany|Germans]], [[Italy|Italians]] and others. After the 1950s, the combined effects of [[urban renewal]], [[white flight]] and institutional growth caused many to flee the neighborhood. In the early 1960s the [[Boston Redevelopment Authority]] razed several homes in the Triangle District section of the neighborhood to make way for new towers surrounded by parking lots.

In December of that same year, Zhensheng met an instrumental figure in the creation of Red-Colored News Soldier: Robert Pledge, an American who was director of Contact Press Images, an international photo agency. When the two met they determined to work together to someday bring out Zhensheng's photographic work, however they both agreed it would be in the best interest to wait until the political climate was right.

In the late 1960s, [[Harvard University]] bought the wood frame and brick houses along Francis, Fenwood, St. Alban's, Kempton Streets, and part of Huntington Avenue, and announced plans to demolish the buildings. Most were replaced with the Mission Park residential complex of towers and townhomes in 1978 after neighborhood residents organized the Roxbury Tenants of Harvard Association convince Harvard to rebuild. Current long-terms plans by Harvard call for the remaining original buildings to be cleared for further development.

Seven months later, in June 1989, the brutal events of [[Tiananmen Square]] made world-wide headlines, and Zhensheng became determined to produce a book to show the world the images from the [[Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution|Cultural Revolution]].

By the 1980s, the area was deemed dangerous and most [[White people]] and affluent [[people of color]] had moved away. The 1989 incident involving [[Charles Stuart (murderer)|Charles Stuart]] further intensified this view. With property values low, many of the homes were bought by [[slum lords]] and converted into rental housing. The inexpensive rents brought many students from nearby colleges and universities, especially [[MassArt]] and the [[School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston|School of the Museum of Fine Arts]], which has a large studio building in the neighborhood[http://www.smfa.edu/Support_SMFA/Mission_Hill_Building_Project/Index.asp]. The Mission Hill Artists Collective now hosts Open Studios [http://www.bostonopenstudios.org/] in the fall of each year.

Work on the book officially began in 1999 and over the next four years a tedious process of editing took place. Robert Pledge did not speak Chinese, and Zhensheng did not speak English. So the two had to coordinate work through the use of translators — many of whom became integral parts of their relationship.

As past fears faded by the mid-1990s, the area began to change as homeowners moved into newly converted condominiums to take advantage of the fanastic views of the city and proximity to the Longwood Area, the MBTA and downtown Boston.

Zhensheng sent over 30,000 brown envelopes to Pledge's office in New York City, each containing a single photographic negative from his time at the [[Heilongjiang]] Daily. The pair often engaged in heated discussions over the editing process of the photographs in the collection.

Today, the neighborhood is briskly [[Gentrification|gentiyfying]] and diversifying in favor of a mix of new luxury condominums and lofts, triple-deckers converted to condominums, surviving student rental units, newly rebuilt public housing, and strong remnants of long-time residents. [[Race|Racially]], Mission Hill is one of the most diverse in the city, with a balance of white, [[Asian]], [[Hispanic]] and [[African-Americans]] having little conflict along race lines.

A number of the images contained self-portraits of Zhensheng. This was the result of always returning to the paper with one extra frame on the film roll; a photojournalism technique of always being prepared to cover a breaking news event at the last minute. Zhensheng would "burn off" the last image with a photo of himself shortly before developing the film. Oftentimes the poses were humorous and playful. One such image of Zhensheng exposing his bare chest was published in the book. He said he was attempting to recreate the old expression of "baring one's chest" in the face of adversity, or in his case, [[communism]].

== Notable Residents, Past and Present ==

During book tours Zhensheng always makes a point to speak of his Chinese [[patriotism]], or more specifically, his love for the country. He says while he disagrees with the government he still loves his country and hopes democracy will perhaps prevail in the long-term future. He does not believe his images or the book should be considered anti-Chinese, rather a reminder of the painful past most countries endure during their evolution.

* [[Maurice Tobin]], Boston politician

* [[Donna Summer]], R&B singer

*"[[A Global Threat]]" bassist J. Curran

==External Neighborhood Groups (external links) ==

* Mission Hill Artists Collective [http://www.red-colornewssoldiergeocities.com official site/mhacollective]

* Community Alliance of Mission Hill [http://www.camhonline.org]

* Mission Hill Main Streets [http://www.missionhillmainstreets.org]

* Sociedad Latina [http://www.sociedadlatina.org]

* Roxbury Tenants of Harvard [http://www.missionpark.com/rth.htm]

* Mission Hill Neighborhood Housing Services [http://www.missionhillnhs.org]

* Boston Redevelopment Authority neighborhood site [http://www.cityofboston.gov/bra/neighborhoods/Neighborhoods.asp?action=ViewHood&HoodID=13]

* Mission Main Tenant Task Force [http://www.missionmain.com/04mm.htm]

== Newspapers ==

* Mission Hill Gazette [http://www.missionhillgazette.com]

== MBTA Subway Stops ==

* On the Green Line, E Branch:

- Longwood, Brigham Circle, Fenwood Road, Mission Park, Back of the Hill, Heath Street.

* On the Orange Line:

- [[Roxbury Crossing (MBTA station)|Roxbury Crossing]], Ruggles Street

The neighborhood is also served by MBTA Bus Route #39 running from Forest Hills in Jamaica Plain to Copley Square and Route #66 running from Dudley Square in Roxbury, through Brookline to Harvard Square in Cambridge. The Urban Ring crosstown route passes through the far eastern corner of the neighborhood along Longwood Avenue and Huntington Avenue.

{{Boston neighborhoods}}

[[Category:Boston neighborhoods]]

[[Category:Streetcar suburbs]]

[[Category:Northeastern University, Boston]]

[[fr:Mission Hill (Boston)]]