Free Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader by Geremie Barme

City), Mao Zedong's birthplace, or "the place where the Red Sun rose," as the Cultural Revolution hosanna put it, was a small town of some 1,500 inhabitants. At the height of the Mao revival in the early 1990s it became a major profit center.
Shaoshan had originally been a district in Xiangtan County, Hunan. During the Cultural Revolution it was promoted to the status of Special District and put directly under provincial control, in recognition of its unimpeachable revolutionary pedigree. In 1980, as Mao's status fell, so did that of his birthplace, and Shaoshan was reduced once more to being a district in Xiangtan. The bloated bureaucracy of the township was also cut back and, in what became a major scandal, a local budget surplus of 1.4 million yuan was covertly distributed among these employees in lieu of severance pay. The scandal was duly reported in the People's Daily, 164 and an odium clung
     

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to the township throughout the decade. 165 With the Chairman's revival in the 1990s, however, such economic freewheeling seemed to be more prescient than reprehensible.
"May you make a fortune out of Chairman Mao!" ( fa Mao zhuxide cai! ), according to one report, became the usual greeting in Shaoshan as the new Mao Cult attracted tourists in numbers not seen for nearly a quarter of a century. 166 In the early 1990s some 3,000 visitors arrived daily, and in 1992 alone more than 1.2 million people trekked to Shaoshan to see the Mao family home and the many sites associated with Mao's childhood. 167 This came after a low in the mid 1980s, when only 50,000 to 60,000 visitors were visiting the town annually. 168 While the numbers of tourists in the 1990s could hardly compare with the mass of pilgrims who inundated Shaoshan in the mid 1960s60,000 a day, most of whom traveled by footnonetheless, the new influx caused a major economic shift in the district, and many locals abandoned traditional agricultural production in favor of the hospitality industry. Of the population of 1,500, more than 780, or 52 percent, were soon engaged in the catering business or selling Mao trinkets at stalls lining the approaches to Mao's house 169 (see Figure 14).
With Shaoshan awash in tourist dollars, sex workers also saw a dramatic increase in their takings. Many of these prostitutes were reportedly Hunan women who, having failed to make the grade in the highly competitive environment of Guangdong (in particular the Special Economic Zones of Shenzhen and Zhuhai), returned home to ply their trade. When I visited Shaoshan in mid 1992 after an absence of some seventeen years, I was accosted by young girls whose general come-on line was as simple as it was direct: "Wanna screw?" ( dadong bu? literally, "wanna poke the hole?"), they asked.
Hotels and restaurants throughout the township sported names that exulted in the Mao surname. Dozens of local houses were converted into eateries and pensions. The earliest and most famous of them was the Mao Family Restaurant (see Figure 15).
Situated on a hillock overlooking the Mao homestead, the Mao Family Restaurant ( Maojia fandian ) was run by Tang Ruiren, a distant relative of Mao Zedong himself. Before opening her restaurant in 1984, "Granny Tang's" main claim to fame was that she had been photographed with Mao and a number of other local peasants in 1959. 170 Customers would be greeted and have a Mao badge pinned on the clothing. Tang would then encourage them to order the most expensive items on the menu: spicy and greasy dishes she claimed were "Chairman Mao's favorites" 171 (see Figure 16). Along with the bill at the end of the meal, diners would be presented with autographed copies of the photograph in which Tang, in the flush of youth, appears stand-
     

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ing near Mao. 172 To avail herself better of the opportunities presented by the Mao revival and its international curiosity value, Tang also learned enough English, Japanese, and Russian to entertain foreign diners. 173
Tang's history