David Eimer: Mao Hyped As Hero For Tourists
The Chairman's image is dangling from the mirror of the taxi that takes me to Mao's childhood home in Shaoshan in southern China. 'He's my good luck charm,' grins the driver. However surprising this may seem, it certainly appears to be working.
Since China's State Council designated this year as the year of Red Tourism, an initiative designed to re-kindle faith in the present-day Communist Party (CCP), a booming Shaoshan has become an unlikely must- see on the tourist trail.
Legions of holiday-makers are flocking to the town, eager to learn more about the roots of the man who in his homeland is still regarded as having done more than any other to unify and form contemporary China.
The CCP knows that, now more than ever, faced with a population more interested in the latest mobile phone than political ideology, it needs a hero. And the Chairman fits the bill better than anyone.
China's State Council, therefore, has been trying to persuade domestic tourists, who made 111 million trips during the recent week-long October national holiday, to turn their backs on destinations such as Hong Kong's new Disneyland, Macau's casinos and the beaches of Hainan island. Instead, the council is promoting the dusty and remote city of Yan'an in Shaanxi province, where Mao and the CCP were based for a decade from 1937, as well as old Red Army battlefields and key sites along the route of the Long March.
For the first time in decades, Yan'an, Shaoshan, in Hunan province, and the Jinggangshan region in Jiangxi province, the first part of China that Mao and the CCP took control of in 1927, have been put on the map. And the government, hoping to gain some reflected glory from a man who remains more popular, 29 years after his death, than any of those who succeeded him, is delighted.
So far, its co-opting of Mao, who had a whole host of villas built around China for his holidays, is working brilliantly. Helped by nostalgia for the certainties of the Mao era and an increasingly nationalistic mood, the Red Tourism initiative has resulted in four million people visiting Yan'an this year.
One hundred and fifty locations in 13 provinces have been earmarked as Red Tourism sites. They range from Zunyi in Guizhou province, where Mao took over the CCP leadership and restaurants offer 'Red Army banquets', with each dish named after a famous battle, to Xibaipo, a village in Hebei province that was Mao's last stop before he arrived in Beijing in 1949 and took power.
Since China's State Council designated this year as the year of Red Tourism, an initiative designed to re-kindle faith in the present-day Communist Party (CCP), a booming Shaoshan has become an unlikely must- see on the tourist trail.
Legions of holiday-makers are flocking to the town, eager to learn more about the roots of the man who in his homeland is still regarded as having done more than any other to unify and form contemporary China.
The CCP knows that, now more than ever, faced with a population more interested in the latest mobile phone than political ideology, it needs a hero. And the Chairman fits the bill better than anyone.
China's State Council, therefore, has been trying to persuade domestic tourists, who made 111 million trips during the recent week-long October national holiday, to turn their backs on destinations such as Hong Kong's new Disneyland, Macau's casinos and the beaches of Hainan island. Instead, the council is promoting the dusty and remote city of Yan'an in Shaanxi province, where Mao and the CCP were based for a decade from 1937, as well as old Red Army battlefields and key sites along the route of the Long March.
For the first time in decades, Yan'an, Shaoshan, in Hunan province, and the Jinggangshan region in Jiangxi province, the first part of China that Mao and the CCP took control of in 1927, have been put on the map. And the government, hoping to gain some reflected glory from a man who remains more popular, 29 years after his death, than any of those who succeeded him, is delighted.
So far, its co-opting of Mao, who had a whole host of villas built around China for his holidays, is working brilliantly. Helped by nostalgia for the certainties of the Mao era and an increasingly nationalistic mood, the Red Tourism initiative has resulted in four million people visiting Yan'an this year.
One hundred and fifty locations in 13 provinces have been earmarked as Red Tourism sites. They range from Zunyi in Guizhou province, where Mao took over the CCP leadership and restaurants offer 'Red Army banquets', with each dish named after a famous battle, to Xibaipo, a village in Hebei province that was Mao's last stop before he arrived in Beijing in 1949 and took power.