Word: shaoshan
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Chairman Mao's birthplace of Shaoshan is a powerful draw for anyone interested in Chinese history. Just don't expect to find too much history there. The town in China's central Hunan province has a museum, library and ersatz 1960s communal farm all dedicated to the founder of the People's Republic. His family home, cattle barn, shed, cattle pen and the family tomb have all been carefully preserved for the millions of tourists, many of them student groups on school-sanctioned "red tours," who visit Shaoshan each year. Newly built shrines - resembling the sort that might have been...
...Luckily, one doesn't have to travel far from Shaoshan and its blaring patriotic songs and armies of hawkers to find a more nuanced and interesting look at modern China. The birthplace of Liu Shaoqi, another communist leader and Mao's contemporary, lies an hour's drive from Shaoshan in Ningxiang county. Liu's memorial is quiet and forested. Once you pass through the entry gates there are no touts or trinket stands, and noticeably fewer visitors. Liu was known as a practical, down-to-earth official. During an inspection tour of the region in 1961, he learned...
Bill Clinton came from a little town called Hope. Chairman Mao sprung from the chili-eating village of Shaoshan, a place whose entire economy now relies on promoting its native son. So it's instructive to think for a moment of the rural district of Kepala Batas, home to Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. The locals of Kepala Batas, located in western Malaysia's Penang state, consider Abdullah, whose ruling National Front coalition is contesting the March 8 general elections, a kindly, avuncular presence. But their real respect appears to be reserved for his father and grandfather, both...
...Peking neighborhood, residents have been instructed to turn in their old Mao badges to local authorities. In the late Chairman's home town of Shaoshan in Hunan province, a hotel built to accommodate a crush of reverent pilgrims stands empty and silent. In Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, the municipal party committee has decided to tear down the huge central statue of Mao that was built in 1968 with funds that had originally been earmarked for a sports center. Signs of a careful, calculated effort by China's current leadership to reduce the status of the once venerated...
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