In Guangzhou Sculpture Park, over near Baiyun Mountain in southern China, there’s a bronze statue of Michael Jackson. Not a plaque, not a mural. A full bronze figure of him, standing in a public park thousands of miles from where he ever lived.
What makes it worth knowing about is who put it there. This wasn’t a city commission or a record-label stunt. The statue was paid for by fans, with donations that came in from Guangzhou and from all over China, and it was unveiled on January 1, 2011, a year and a half after he died. A local artist named Lu Zengkang sculpted it.
Michael Jackson Statue Opening Ceremony – Guangzhou, China
People sometimes forget how massive Michael was in China, and how deep that ran. He was one of the first Western pop acts a whole generation there grew up on, and the grief when he passed was just as real in Guangzhou as it was in Los Angeles or London. The statue was the fans’ way of making that permanent, chipping in whatever they could so there’d be a place to go and remember him. Decades after the music first reached them, they put him in bronze and stood him up in a park, and there he’s been ever since.