Friday, July 11, 2008

Mao, megaphones and the mausoleum

We took a trip to 'Chairman' Mao Zedong's mausoleum today in Beijing.
The deceased founder of the People's Republic of China lies in a glass box in a grandiose building in the centre of Tiananmen Square.
Literally thousands of Chinese citizens - and a handful of bemused foreigners - join long, winding queues to see Mao's body every morning (they for the day at noon).
The fact that it's free means every Chinese who visits the capital takes in the mausoleum. Many buy fake flowers from vendors inside the compound to lay near the Chairman's body.
Security is tight (you can't bring in bags or cameras) but the line moves along remarkably swiftly thanks to the seemingly endless number of officials and policemen with megaphones and an inflated sense of self-importance.
Some are uniformed, some are not. All use their megaphones even when standing two feet away from the person they are addressing.
In our case, of course, it didn't matter how loud they barked orders, we still hadn't a clue what was being said - so we just followed the crowd.
In the awe-hushed room where Mao's body lies, the queue moves faster than ever. For some reason they're not keen to allow you dawdle through or to get in any way close to the somewhat misty glass case housing the great man's body.
To my eye it was a waxwork so shoddy that Madame Toussaud's would reject it as below par and unrealistic. But nobody else seemed to care a damn...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Memory sure is becoming cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. I'm curious as to when we will finally hit the rate of $0.01 to 1 GB.

I'm eagerly anticipating the day when I will finally be able to afford a 20 terabyte hard drive . But for now I will be satisfied with having a 16 gig Micro SD Card in my R4i.

(Submitted on SerVo for R4i Nintendo DS.)