In February, a group of historians, architects and other specialists, commissioned by the Brussels regional government, proposed two options on what to do with the bronze statue of Belgian king Leopold II, who reigned from 1865 to 1909. The first proposed option is that the statue, located in the centre of Belgium’s capital, could be melted down and recast as a monument to the millions who died during the king’s brutal rule of the Belgian Congo and other victims of colonialism. The second option is to create an open-air statue park to house the statue, along with other monuments to controversial figures of the colonial past. Under Leopold’s rule of the Congo Free State (1885-1908), which was privately owned by him, untold millions of Africans lost their lives or had their hands cut off for not meeting rubber production quotas set by the king and his minions. This and other shameful legacies of Belgium’s colonial past were rarely talked about by Belgians and the rest of the Western world until the late 1990s, with the publication of King Leopold’s Ghost by American historian Adam Hochschild, and more recently, the global Black Lives Matter movement. Although the instinctive response is to banish the image of the mass murderer from public view, I prefer the second option suggested by the experts, which is to congregate the statues of the king and the likes of him in a single location. Statues are often associated with public adulation, but they can also be monuments to infamy and shame. A statue park could be a place for education: who these images represent, why they were put up in the first place, who had put them up, and why they have ended up where they are. I would go even further by proposing that visitors to the future statue park be allowed to embellish the monuments with graffiti, paint or any other substance at hand, organic or otherwise. Those who prefer to remember Leopold and European colonialism more fondly – and these people are legion in Belgium and other countries – are also free to garland their heroes with flowers, ribbons and other pretty things. And if the opposing groups and law enforcement forces engage in occasional physical altercations, or worse, in the park, well, that’s the price we’ll have to pay for freedom of expression, isn’t it? In China, the most infamous purpose-built statues for public vilification were those of the Song dynasty politician Qin Hui (1090-1155) and his wife. In the epic tale of Chinese national hero Yue Fei (1103-1142), who valiantly defended the Southern Song dynasty against invasions from the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty, and whose loyalty to emperor and country was rewarded with treachery, betrayal and his own death, Qin was cast as the consummate villain. For abetting her husband in causing Yue’s death, Qin’s wife Madam Wang has also been hated by generations of Chinese. Statues of Qin and Wang, some of which depicted them in various states of undress, always show them kneeling in contrition. Presently, their statues can be found in about half a dozen locations in China, but the most famous ones are found in the Yue Fei Temple in Hangzhou, on the banks of the beautiful West Lake. The first pair of statues was erected here in 1475. Since then, the images of Qin and Wang have been subjected to all manner of physical abuse. At various times in the past, they were thrown into the lake or irrevocably damaged, but each time new statues reappear and the cycle of abuse resumes. The present statues, the 12th iteration, date from 1979. ‘What are your pronouns?’ New gender-neutral Chinese character being touted It’s up to the Belgians, of course, to decide what they want to do with King Leopold’s statue, but just toppling it would be letting him off too easy.