Josh Green: China ... the pickled dictator tour
We paid our driver and hurried out of the cab that brought us to Tiananmen Square, determined to fight the crowds surrounding a large, beige building dominating the middle of the famous public space. The evening before, my girlfriend and I had resolved that this particular site was a must-see.
"We have to do it," she said, poring over a travel book. "We have to see Pickled Mao."
Why else would one travel to the East if not to see the preserved body of one of the most notorious leaders in the world? It was an opportunity too good to pass up. Few leaders get to spend eternity in a crystal coffin and a huge mausoleum built just for them.
Joining Mao Zedong are Vladimir Lenin and Ho Chi Minh, two other notable despots who remain on display for adoring fans. We dream of a Pickled Dictator Trifecta one day, and we are but two short trips to Russia and Vietnam from getting there.
Actually, somewhere, in a secret Moscow lab at the Research Center for Bio-structures, these iconic men, now shriveled masses of horror-show tissue, pay a visit every 18 months for a special chemical bath, according to several books on the subject. The process is kept so secret on when and how their bodies are sent, and what chemicals are used, that a Google search won't get you very far. Beginning with Lenin, there have been at least nine other communist leaders who have been embalmed and put on display.
But maintenance is paramount for those who have been dead for more than a decade or two.
Even U.S. presidents don't get this kind of treatment - a few have lain in state at the Capitol upon their deaths (Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, for example), and rumor has it that when Abraham Lincoln's body was exhumed in 1901, Honest Abe had been so well embalmed that his body was perfectly preserved 36 years after his death. But Western sensibilities frown on keeping bodies of our great leaders on public display. The best they get is eternal thanks from those who need a day off in February.
Every building and monument at Tiananmen Square is built in grand proportions, to highlight the power of the state that built them. Mao's mausoleum is no exception and faces the Forbidden City to the north, the last royal palace that offers exquisite examples of Ming and Qing dynasties' architecture and treasure. At the south entrance of Beijing, a multistory portrait of Chairman Mao stares down at all Western tourists who enter the gate.
Read entire article at San Francisco Chronicle
"We have to do it," she said, poring over a travel book. "We have to see Pickled Mao."
Why else would one travel to the East if not to see the preserved body of one of the most notorious leaders in the world? It was an opportunity too good to pass up. Few leaders get to spend eternity in a crystal coffin and a huge mausoleum built just for them.
Joining Mao Zedong are Vladimir Lenin and Ho Chi Minh, two other notable despots who remain on display for adoring fans. We dream of a Pickled Dictator Trifecta one day, and we are but two short trips to Russia and Vietnam from getting there.
Actually, somewhere, in a secret Moscow lab at the Research Center for Bio-structures, these iconic men, now shriveled masses of horror-show tissue, pay a visit every 18 months for a special chemical bath, according to several books on the subject. The process is kept so secret on when and how their bodies are sent, and what chemicals are used, that a Google search won't get you very far. Beginning with Lenin, there have been at least nine other communist leaders who have been embalmed and put on display.
But maintenance is paramount for those who have been dead for more than a decade or two.
Even U.S. presidents don't get this kind of treatment - a few have lain in state at the Capitol upon their deaths (Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, for example), and rumor has it that when Abraham Lincoln's body was exhumed in 1901, Honest Abe had been so well embalmed that his body was perfectly preserved 36 years after his death. But Western sensibilities frown on keeping bodies of our great leaders on public display. The best they get is eternal thanks from those who need a day off in February.
Every building and monument at Tiananmen Square is built in grand proportions, to highlight the power of the state that built them. Mao's mausoleum is no exception and faces the Forbidden City to the north, the last royal palace that offers exquisite examples of Ming and Qing dynasties' architecture and treasure. At the south entrance of Beijing, a multistory portrait of Chairman Mao stares down at all Western tourists who enter the gate.