Thirty years after his death, Mao’s legacy is most obvious at his birthplace 　　He Yanghui, 60, understands well that the quality of life for her husband and herself this year depends as usual on sales of souvenirs at their two-square-meter stall. The couple grows their own rice for staple food, but for every bit of the family’s disposable income, the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, Chairman Mao Zedong, takes credit three decades after his death.
　　Their stall, one in a row of a dozen, is in mountainous Shaoshan in southern Hunan Province and only about 100 meters away from a mud-wall house that has since been renovated. This was the home of Mao’s parents, and the birthplace of the man himself. To people who revere Mao, it is like Mecca. Souvenir stall owners like He are a dime a dozen among the farmers of this village, many of whom earn a living by selling mostly cheap items with Mao’s image on it, from badges to key rings to alarm clocks.
　　He’s three sons are all in the same business.“All year, I only take three or five days off, when the farm work is really busy,” said He, who grew up in the area and has been selling Mao souvenirs for 20 years. “After all, I can earn a little more than 10,000 yuan in a normal year by selling souvenirs, and that gives us a comfortable life.”
　　He’s stall is on the side of a path leading to the tomb of Mao’s parents, which many tourists will take time to visit after seeing the house. When there are no customers around, He enjoys eagle-eying the tourists from all over the world as they weave through the jumbled mess of old buildings. She regards the length of the queues as her business climate index.
　　“The crowd has become bigger and bigger in recent years. I’ve seen longer queues only during the Cultural Revolution,” said He, watching the crowd three days before the 30th anniversary of the death of Mao.“Long live Chairman Mao,” once the most popular slogan during the Cultural Revolution, faded away for most Chinese people with Mao’s death on September 9, 1976, the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution that year and social upheavals thereafter. Yet for the people in Mao’s hometown, and in particular the souvenir sellers, it all seems still relevant as every day they see and feel the direct benefits of living around Mao’s birthplace.Mao as god MAO MECCA: According to local tourism officials, last year, 2.8 million people visited Mao’s family home in Shaoshan, only slightly less than the peak number during the Cultural Revolution Despite making a living by selling trinkets with his image on them, He thinks Mao’s greatest legacy at his birthplace is not the rampant consumerism but his spiritual legacy.
　　“I will remember him as an altruistic man for losing six family members to the revolution,” she said. Shaoshan is Mao’s birthplace and where he spent his childhood and early teenage years before departing for further studies in Changsha, capital city of Hunan Province, in 1910 at the age of 17. He came back in the 1920s, founding underground rural Party branches and educating farmers on fighting landlords for a fairer society.
　　Many townspeople followed Mao’s revolutionary path, including his two brothers and his first wife, who died in the struggle for Communism and are considered martyrs. He came back to Shaoshan twice after the 1949 founding of the new China, in 1959 and 1966. Items on display in museums in Shaoshan include a pair of worn out slippers and a robe Mao wore during his trips to his hometown, reinforcing the image of a leader who would sacrifice luxuries for the well-being of his people.
　　Mao’s perceived high moral ground along with his image as a savior of the nation has fostered some people’s worship of him. Credit card-sized metal talismans with engraved portraits of Mao to bring health and fortune, instead of the more usual images of Buddha, can be bought at almost every souvenir stall in Shaoshan.Tang Tian, 24, a civil servant of local government, said she wouldn’t say anything unfavorable about Mao on any occasion. Besides her affection for the great leader, she has a fear of punishment from beyond the grave for offending Mao’s spirit. Song Zihao, a tourist from Hebei Province, has carried with him a Mao talisman every day since 2001. He believes his worship for Mao gave him the strength to end his six-year addiction to drugs, which almost killed him.
　　“I was doing nothing but waiting for death, without thinking in my wildest dreams that I could be normal again,” said the middle-aged businessman who is now finding success in the construction material business. Song said that back in his home province he is among the spiritual believers in Mao, who think that Mao saved the people from suppression and exploitation in his human life and came back to earth to save people.
　　The believers regard Mao as a Buddha. While Song’s tale is one of extreme devotion, stories about people who have had their wishes come true after praying in front of statues of Mao are widely traded in the alleys of Shaoshan.Mao tourismMao’s hometown is located in a mountainous area, 100 km southwest of Changsha. The county has a population of 100,000 in an area of 210 square km, a small town by Chinese standards, but local tourism authorities say it has accommodated more than 50 million visitors since the 1950s.
　　Last year, the total revenue of the tourism sector was 396 million yuan, accounting for one third of the GDP. Huang Lishan, Vice Director of the Shaoshan Government’s Media Center, said that the development of tourism, while making limited contributions to the local treasury, has greatly improved the quality of life for local farmers. In 2005, the per-capita income of Shaoshan County’s 80,000 peasants was 5,150 yuan, much higher than the average level of Hunan Province of 3,118 yuan.One third of the total county area, or 70 square km, has been developed as a tourism zone, highlighting Mao’s birthplace, school, memorial museum, memorial hall, the Mao Zedong library and the hotel where Mao lived in 1966.
　　Besides selling souvenirs and books about Mao, many farmers have opened restaurants selling “Mao’s favorite dishes” or hotels to accommodate tourists. According to Shaoshan tourism officials, 2.8 million tourists visited Mao’s childhood home last year, an increase of 40 percent over the previous year and close to the peak figure of 2.9 million in 1966, the first year of the Cultural Revolution.
　　“Over half of the visitors are middle-aged or older,” said Han Li, 25, an administrator at the tourism spot. According to her observations, Shaoshan is a lot less of an attraction to children and teenagers, who mostly come under organized school tours.Born and raised in Shaoshan County, civil servant Tang Tian visited most Mao tourism spots several times when she was in primary and middle school, on school group trips.
　　Thus it is not surprising that when accompanying friends also in their 20s who were visiting for the first time, her commentary, dotted with anecdotes from Mao’s life, is comparable to that of any professional tour guide. Tang said she had great respect for Mao, but the Chinese literature major admitted she has little knowledge of Mao’s poems, essays or thinking. Tang said she could sing most of the songs praising Mao since they are broadcast in public places in Shaoshan, like buses.When asked whether she would sing Mao’s songs at karaoke, a popular entertainment form for young people throughout China, she answered with a laugh: “No, of course not―that’s different.”
　　Hometown advantage TIME WARP: On display at the memorial museum in Shaoshan are photos and posters of Mao, as well as badges of him from different time periods Besides the development of Shaoshan as a site of pilgrimage, another boost to the economy is the huge amount of government investment in infrastructure.
　　The county has a legacy of such investments. In 1967, two days after Mao’s birthday and a year after the start of the Cultural Revolution, a railway station opened along with direct train service from Changsha to Shaoshan.In the years that followed, the train carried innumerable Mao devotees dressed in their blue Mao suits on their pilgrimages to visit their beloved leader’s hometown.The train still arrives from Changsha once a day, but the railway station isn’t bustling anymore, a huge painting of Mao looking down on the empty benches. The construction of a new highway, built for the 110th anniversary of Mao’s birth in 2003 made it faster to travel by road-only one and a half hours from Changsha to Shaoshan by bus, instead of about two and a half by train. Another highway is currently being built.Huang Lishan said the best news in terms of Shaoshan’s development last year was the Central Government’s decision to build the county as a nationalism education base under something called the “No. 1 Project.” The other two places on the project list are Jinggangshan, the location of the Communist Party’s outpost against Kuomintang suppression in the 1920s and 1930s, and Yan’an, the Communist Party’s headquarters in the 1930s and 1940s.According to the campaign, which began last December, by the end of 2007 the government will have invested 290 million yuan, including 236 million from the central treasury, in building and renovating Mao memorial facilities and improving the infrastructure in the tourism zone. Last November, the Hunan Provincial Government also issued an outline to make Shaoshan a so-called model county of a “ well-off socialist society” in the next five years by investing 100 million yuan in the area every year.
　　“Honestly, it is difficult for Shaoshan to develop fast by relying solely on its own strength,” Huang said. He explained that the county has no heavy industry and recent years have seen the decline of the state-owned economy as many factories went bankrupt or were bought by individuals.
　　“After all, it is the common hope of all Chinese people to see prosperity in Mao’s hometown,” he added.In May, the Shaoshan Government launched a campaign of “jointly developing Shaoshan,” inviting leaders from 29 big cities from across China to make an investment in or donation to Shaoshan with the goal of building a “well-off society.”
　　Thirty million yuan was collected, Huang said.However, he added that Mao refused similar initiatives when municipalities and provinces volunteered to help with Shaoshan’s development in the 1950s. “He loved his hometown, but didn’t want it to enjoy privileges because of his status,” Huang said.

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