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The victory of the military parade on September 3 ended. There were 14 white doves of peace on the main venue. This is the dove of peace in China, symbolizing the 14-year War of Resistance Against Japan, representing the Chinese people's pursuit of peace and the peace that they ultimately won. Today, let’s discuss why doves of peace, or doves, have become symbols of peace.
This story starts with World War II. At that time, the famous Spanish painter Picasso settled in France, and France was occupied by Nazi Germany. One day, a little boy came to Picasso with a bloody pigeon and cried about a German soldier robbing his pigeon and killing it because the soldiers suspected that the pigeon was a tool to send signals to the guerrillas. This story left a deep impression on Picasso.
After the end of World War II, the World Peace Conference held in France in 1949 invited Picasso to design a monogram representing world peace for the conference. Picasso immediately thought of the little boy and his dead dove, so he decided to draw a white pure dove of peace, symbolizing world peace. From then on, the white dove became a symbol of world peace.
So, why did Picasso think of this little boy's dove story? And why did he draw an olive branch on the dove’s mouth? This is related to the Christian biblical story. There is a story about Noah’s Ark in the Bible. God created a flood due to his dissatisfaction with mankind, but he notified Noah in advance and asked him to build a large ship and put all the animals in pairs. After the flood, all humans on Earth died, and only Noah's family and animals on the ship survived. In order to find land, Noah released the animals on the spacecraft every day, until one day, a pair of pigeons he released brought back an olive branch, which indicated that the pigeons found the land and the humans were saved. Therefore, Europeans viewed pigeons as human mascots.
Picasso combined the stories in the Bible with stories in World War II to create a symbol of peace in a new era - the dove of peace. This is the origin of the dove of peace.
