回復威海衛記念塔, Memorial monument in Weihai, China
The Recovery of Weihaiwei Memorial Tower is a 32-foot triangular prism of 45 Laizhou marble blocks in Jingyuan (Whale Garden) near Weihai Port. Its three faces carry inscriptions by Foreign Minister Wang Zhengting and commissioner Xu Zushan, with the Sino-British treaty and Three Principles of the People below.
Britain forced the Qing government to lease Weihaiwei and a 738.15 km² area for 25 years, taking control in 1898 and ruling for 32 years. After difficult negotiations, British rule ended on 1 October 1930, though Liugong Island remained leased for another decade. The Weihaiwei Administration Office built the tower in 1931 for the first anniversary of the return.
The tower's three faces carry different inscriptions: Wang Zhengting, then foreign minister, wrote the tower's name in Wei stele script, carved by Liu Xigui, while Xu Zushan, first commissioner of the Weihaiwei administration, wrote the lower text on the lease and its recovery. The other faces reproduce the Sino-British handover treaty and the full text of the Three Principles of the People.
The tower stands in Jingyuan, the small triangular garden on the north side of Weihai Port in the city centre, facing east. It was moved 10 m west of its original spot when rebuilt in 1980, so the present position is not the 1931 one. The carved inscriptions have faded and were partly restored in 2017.
The tower's height of 32 feet encodes the 32 years of British rule, and its three faces were assigned meanings: Sino-British goodwill, adherence to the Three Principles of the People, and remembrance of the martyrs of the First Sino-Japanese War. During the Cultural Revolution the remaining inscriptions were ground off and replaced with slogans such as "Long live Mao Zedong Thought".
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