In death, Mao still inspirational

BEIJING:  From all across China, they gather daily in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square: thousands shuffling their way to a majestic monument at one end of the alfresco Square. 
All around are throngs of people, their voices raised in excitement, but the mood among those queued up is rather more solemn.

Their mission: to pay homage to China’s most famous modern revolutionary leader, Mao Zedong, whose 30th death anniversary falls on September 9. These are the silent admirers of the Great Helmsman (as he was known), his own private army of adherents.  

In a day and age when China has moved far away from Mao’s socialist ideology, when unabashed materialism rules the day, and when Mao’s own place in Chinese history is gradually being consigned to footnotes, those gathering at his mausoleum, where his body lies in state, in a crystal coffin, are living, breathing testimony to the fact that in death, as in life, Mao has the capacity to move millions of his countrymen.  

China’s official media will likely play down this anniversary, as it has those of recent years.

That’s because Mao’s legacy is something of a mixed blessing for China’s leaders. Despite his image, in the official propagandist line at least, as the man who “liberated” China, defeated the Japanese and united the country, Mao also unleashed unspeakable horrors on his own people

Millions of people died during the Great Leap Forward, an ill-conceived programme of rapid industrialisation that led to famines in the late 1950s, and then the Cultural Revolution, the anarchic decade from 1966 when Chinese society was rent asunder by Mao’s machinations.

Today, the official assessment of Mao’s legacy takes on a formulaic characterisation: he was 70% right, 30% wrong.

Those numbers are playing on my mind as I find myself in Tiananmen Square one morning, heading for the tail-end of the queue outside of his mausoleum. All around me are peasants from Anhui, factory workers from Hubei, and migrant workers from Hunan (where Mao was born in 1893), their rugged but pacific faces do not refelct any discomfort despite the heat of the day.

The queue is miles long and there’s a 30% chance that I may not gain entry by mid-day, when the mausoleum closes. It’s my last day in Beijing, and I am perhaps more than a little desperate. 

Soon enough, a “solution with Chinese characteristics” presents itself. A man sidles up, and helps me jump the queue – or should I say, make the Great Leap Forward – for a small consideration.

A hush falls over the crowd as we troop into the mausoleum. In the centre of the main hall lies the embalmed body of the man who rose from humble origins to preside over the destiny of millionse. Even in death, Mao’s image is carefully managed.

Xenon lamps inside the coffin provide illumination that ensures that the pallor of his skin is “life-like”, and even “irons out” his wrinkles. In those fleeting moments, during which we file past his coffin, I can’t help but wonder at the amazing likeness Mao’s cadaver bears to his waxen image at the museum nearby. 

It is only the emotion among ordinary people that serves to keep Mao’s memory alive, long after the Communist Party and its leaders have, in practice at least, forsaken his thoughts.