This is a bronze drum totem of the Zhuang people (壮族) with the CCP sign supplanting the central “sun” motif. The Zhuang people worship the sun as a cosmological totem that links community life to the heavens. Historically, the drums have served both ritual and social roles. Although many were denounced and confiscated during the Cultural Revolution, in the post-Mao era, the drum’s imagery has been both revived as intangible cultural heritage and co-opted into modern political and civic displays.

Under the increased penetration of the Party-state, that traditional imagery has in many places been supplanted or overlaid by symbols associated with the Communist Party. This scene captures a process of symbolic substitution in which the state inserts itself into the cosmological and ritual order of the Zhuang, transforming a sacred motif into an instrument for naturalizing contemporary political authority.