May 11, 2012 – Near Longnan Gansu

As of October 2018 confirmed no longer extant.

Wow, there is so much going on in this mosaic.

The text across the top is an attempt at shortening the phrase “用深情的目光伴幼苗茁壮成长 凭知识的力量托起明天的太阳” With an affectionate gaze, assist excellent seedlings in growing up vigorously and healthily; the power of knowledge supports tomorrow’s sun,

I think the spiky blue things are supposed to represent space stations or satellites. They look more like giant bombs to me but despite the squadron of fighter planes and the military radar, the doves being released by the man indicate that this is supposed to have a peaceful message.

Next we have three children. More girls than boys because the already existing gender imbalance is a bad bad bad thing and every possible opportunity will be taken to subtly and not so subtly cram the message “girl children are good” down people’s throats.

However, the items that the children are holding, airplane = engineer for the boy, book = scholar for the middle girl, and sheaf of wheat = fertility for the righthand girl fall back on general stereotypes.

Is there a reason why the clouds are pink? Or that they are apparently floating in a group of clouds? Honestly, I’m not even entirely sure that they are clouds. It could be an incredibly bad representation of earth.

I’ve got two copies of this mosaic with different color selections, different states of repair and different messages (the other one reads: 生男生女一样好 女儿也是传后人 “give birth to a boy, give birth to a girl, both are equally good; girls are also descendants”) and the cloud-like stuff is pink in both.