On May 4th, after battling cancer for 11 years, Liu Guoxuan, one of the initiators of the “Monument to Sacrificed Youth Fleeing Hong Kong in the East” passed away at the age of 76 at his home. His memorial service was held on May 17th in Chinatown, New York. Relatives, friends, and former “fleeing to Hong Kong youth” gathered to reminisce about Liu Guoxuan’s legendary pursuit of freedom and bid him farewell.
Adorning the sides of the hall were couplets summarizing his lifelong pursuits and character: “Constitutional democracy, freedom, and the New World is our homeland. Peace, love, firmness, passed down for generations, playing a triumphant song.”
Born on December 25, 1947 in Wuhan, China, Liu Guoxuan served as the commander of the “Guangzhou Brigade,” a student civilian Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1968. In the chaotic and brutal era, after the peak of the movement, students were sent to the countryside in the “Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages” movement, which made Liu Guoxuan begin to doubt the movement and undergo a change in ideology. In the 1970s, many Guangdong youth illegally crossed to Hong Kong to break free from communist constraints and pursue freedom. Liu Guoxuan and his fiancée (later wife) Chen Huamei successfully crossed three times and arrived in Hong Kong by the end of 1974, later emigrating to New York in 1978.
After arriving in the United States, he started from scratch, running food trucks, restaurants, working as a real estate broker, and engaging in monument business. He also founded the New York Guangdong Alumni Association. To commemorate the victims of communism and preserve people’s memory of these victims, Liu Guoxuan, along with some former fleeing to Hong Kong youths, initiated the establishment of the “Monument to Sacrificed Youth Fleeing Hong Kong in the East” in the eastern United States. Two monuments were erected in New Jersey’s “Eternal Bliss Cemetery” in 2022 and 2023.
Approximately 30 former fleeing to Hong Kong youths and Guangdong classmates attended the memorial service to bid farewell to Liu Guohua, with speeches given by Song Ying and A Tuo. Song Ying said, she had known Liu Guoxuan for nearly half a century and they were comrades who fled to Hong Kong together (previously known as “criminal rebels”). Their lives were intertwined with the great era of China. In the early 1970s, they began planning how to flee to Hong Kong, “watching him and Huamei make a rubber dinghy with an iron and plastic sheets.” After Song Ying also arrived in Hong Kong in 1976, she and Liu Guoxuan started the monthly magazine “Beidou” together.
Song Ying said, “In the magazine, we wrote about our smuggling stories, exposed the darkness of the mainland, and discussed where China was heading. We wrote, edited, printed, and sold the magazine together from writing, editing, typing, layout, printing, until we took the magazines to the newsstands to sell. At that time, we were very poor but had ideals and aspirations, although ‘Beidou’ ended after twelve issues, it was a memorable chapter in our lives.”
In 2021, Song Ying and Liu Guoxuan planned the monument to commemorate the victims who died tragically while fleeing, she said, “If it weren’t for Liu Guoxuan’s full dedication and his experience in the tombstone industry, the completion of these two monuments would have been nearly impossible.”
A Tuo, a member of the monument construction team and a researcher on the history of the Cultural Revolution youths, said that Liu Guoxuan pursued freedom throughout his life and had a “signature smile,” “laughing at life.”
A Tuo said, “His smile is a free person’s smile. When we joined the Cultural Revolution, we pursued the road to paradise, but the Cultural Revolution led us onto the road to hell. So when I came to this free world, I realized what Faye Dunaway said, ‘This system leads to the road of enslavement,’ so we never went into the palace (into politics). We must maintain the character of a free person, and Liu Guoxuan’s smile is a free person’s smile; he was always free.”