Thousands queue up for Mao

Thousands queue up for Mao
Dec 27, 2010 03:24
SKYVIA Points: Join Date: Nov 22, 2010 Status: offline	Thousands of people visited the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in Beijing, final resting place of Mao Zedong, yesterday to pay their respects and reminisce about the former leader on the 117th anniversary of his birth. Visitors had formed long queues outside the northern gate of the hall before 7:30am. First among those who dedicated flowers to Mao was Wang Wenzheng, who told Beijing-based Legal Evening he had waited more than one and a half hours in the queue. Wang, a postgraduate in the Beijing Normal University, first visited the memorial hall when he was five years old. "It was worth waiting for the moment," Wang said yesterday. White chrysanthemums and baskets of flowers, including some from Mao's two daughters Li Min and Li Ne, were laid in front of the Chairman Mao statue in the northern hall while many visitors bowed before it. Chairman Mao's grandson, Mao Xinyu, a major general and research fellow with the People's Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences, arrived at the memorial hall at 10:20am with his family and placed a flower basket before the statue. Meanwhile, many people flocked to Chairman Mao's hometown in Shaoshan in central China's Hunan Province, to pay their respects. Following a tradition of eating a bowl of noodles on Chairman Mao's birthday, 80-year-old Beijing native Cao Zuohou and his wife traveled to Shaoshan to "have a bowl of birthday noodles to remember Chairman Mao," he told China News Service. The square at Mao's hometown, where there is a bronze statue of the founder of the New China, had become a sea of flowers by 7am. When the first notes of "The East Is Red" were heard, everyone at the square began singing the song. A marathon was also held in the city yesterday, the 25th, in accordance with Chairman Mao's vow to "develop sport to make people strong." The day also saw a foundation laying ceremony at Shaoshan for a brand new town in Mao's birthplace.

Dec 27, 2010 03:24

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Thousands of people visited the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in Beijing, final resting place of Mao Zedong, yesterday to pay their respects and reminisce about the former leader on the 117th anniversary of his birth.

Visitors had formed long queues outside the northern gate of the hall before 7:30am. First among those who dedicated flowers to Mao was Wang Wenzheng, who told Beijing-based Legal Evening he had waited more than one and a half hours in the queue.

Wang, a postgraduate in the Beijing Normal University, first visited the memorial hall when he was five years old. "It was worth waiting for the moment," Wang said yesterday.

White chrysanthemums and baskets of flowers, including some from Mao's two daughters Li Min and Li Ne, were laid in front of the Chairman Mao statue in the northern hall while many visitors bowed before it.

Chairman Mao's grandson, Mao Xinyu, a major general and research fellow with the People's Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences, arrived at the memorial hall at 10:20am with his family and placed a flower basket before the statue.

Meanwhile, many people flocked to Chairman Mao's hometown in Shaoshan in central China's Hunan Province, to pay their respects.

Following a tradition of eating a bowl of noodles on Chairman Mao's birthday, 80-year-old Beijing native Cao Zuohou and his wife traveled to Shaoshan to "have a bowl of birthday noodles to remember Chairman Mao," he told China News Service.

The square at Mao's hometown, where there is a bronze statue of the founder of the New China, had become a sea of flowers by 7am.

When the first notes of "The East Is Red" were heard, everyone at the square began singing the song.

A marathon was also held in the city yesterday, the 25th, in accordance with Chairman Mao's vow to "develop sport to make people strong."

The day also saw a foundation laying ceremony at Shaoshan for a brand new town in Mao's birthplace.

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