The chairman
(Satellite view of the Mao ZeDong Memorial Hall: Beijing, China)
A wildcard image today – in all the excitement of Tiananmen Square and in the fray that was the tail end of the queue to visit Chairman Mao in state, I completely neglected to take any photographs of the colossal line of people waiting to enter. It isn’t a fantastic image (you may recognise it as a google satellite map), but it gives some impression as to the scale of the hall and the scale of people.
The tiny, fuzzy dots are obviously people and if you look at the top of the image, between the trees and the four buildings, there is a little triangle of dots; these are people lining up to be patted down for cameras, phones and weapons, then x rayed. The miniscule building below these is where single yellow flowers can be purchased for laying at the foot of Mao’s statue inside the mausoleum.
When we visited, the dots at the top right hand corner of the complex did not fade out there – they snaked all the way to the bottom left corner, around and beyond it. There were thousands of people, many thousands more than even I anticipated. I attempted to explain to my family (who insisted on going there) that this visit would likely be the busiest of our trip. The collective memory of the Chairman and his legacy live on, even thirty odd years after his death. They scoffed at my predictions and explained in slightly condescending tones that Mao had been long dead and that his ‘novelty’ and importance would have subsided somewhat. I was unmoved. Once we arrived there, early in the morning, I had been correct. It was, however a hollow victory and a blow to my spirits as we queued for a long while. Our time in the presence of Mao’s remains was (mercifully) brief.
– Today Rosie is in the UK, planning projects –
