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Published: October 28th 2005
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I was let to sleep until I woke up with the sound of the birds chirping away in the garden. As soon as it was known I was awake, the butler brought me a large silver tray with steaming delicious coffee, fresh jams, bread, petit pains etc... I really like the French.
Another shower later, I go and meet Madame Guelluy in the garden. The ambassador is also there and I tell him about my plans for Tibet. He kindly sets up a meeting for the afternoon with his translator, who is a specialist on the question.
I head off in the morning to pay my hommage to Mao. I have already seen him before but I wanted to see him again.
I arrived on Tienamen Square and was faced with the familiar face of Mao hanging from the walls of the forbidden city. I headed across the square and gave a chinese soldier one of his worse dilemas: he has to remain standing at attention yet he cannot possibly allow a stupid foreigner to cross the street when it is cleary forbidden. He resolves the problem by remaining rigidly at attention while shouting obscenities at me. I
remain calm amd proceed to ignore him. As I reach the other side, I am picked up by a policeman who shouts more obscenities at me. I take a candid smile and tell him in my best german that I am merely going to learn about the great revolution in the palace of the revolutions. He reluctantly lets me go and finds himself some other chinese person he can take it out on more effectively.
I go round to see the line forming up in front of the memorial: it is huge, it stretches all round the memorial and back round the square. I go and leave my bags, cameras, mobile phone and other capitalist tools in a cloakroom and observe carefully the behaviour of the queue.
The queue is 4 people wide and is divided from the rest of the square by a large empty gap of about 5 meters. This gap is maintained with the help of a rope and attendants with loudspeakers every 10 meters who keep people from jumping in the queue.
After careful observation, I found 4 options open to me: the first was, of course, to find the end of the
queue somewhere in the suburbs of the city and move slowly along for hours on end.
Option 2 consited of jumping the rope and the queue while the attendents were not looking. I saw many people trying it, about 20% succeded, the rest were pushed back out.
Option 3 was to walk up to the attendent, treat him as an old friend, pat his back, shake his hand and drop inadvertently 10 to 20 yuans in his hand. The attendent would then be suddenly fascinated by something happening elsewhere and you would be free to join the queue.
Option 4 consisted of paying a smuggler the fixed sum of 25 Yuans and he would place you at the front of the queue in the section he controlled. The attendent would let it happen as he has already been given a fixed sum to look away.
I chose to jump the queue while they weren't looking, keeping 20 Yuans in my hand should the need arise to corrupt my attendent. I managed without the need to corrupt anyone. Rather proud of myself, I spent the entire time I was in the queue looking disaprovingly at people who
had bribed their way and asking them, with my nose up, if they had no shame at all.
Once we reached the bottom of the Mausoleum, we saw a stand where one could buy for 5 Yuan a disgusting old bouquet of cheap plastic flowers. Those flowers have clearly been in use since the revolution. Once you have bought your plastic mess, you keep going until you finally reach the entrance hall of the Mausoleum.
There thrones a large statue of Mao looking placidly and with contempt over his people. The lucky ones with a bouquet are allowed to step forward, bow deeply in a caricatural way and place their flowers in a cart. Once the cart is full, it is wheeled back down to the shop to be sold again. This does not seem to bother anyone at all.
We are moved at great pace along to the next room, the tomb where Mao himself supposedly lies. I find it strange that he is covered with a soviet flag and not the chinese revolutionnary flag but I barely have time to wonder that I am already being pushed out. The man himself looks like he is
a wax figurine on loan from Madame Tussaud's.
We are then given all the time we could wish for to have the opportunity to buy all the Mao souvenirs. This includes great paintings of the smiling man working with happy peasants in the overproductive fields, defending the poor women and child while urging his brave soldiers to move forward against an unknown ennemy, paintings of him giving courage and hope to his thousands on the long march, speaking in front of the exhalted population etc... heart warming stuff really.
There is also the whole panoply of bad taste on display (not that the paintings were of good taste) : lighters, alarm clocks, statues, calendars, chains, keyrings and other monstruosities.
I can't help but wonder if this is a representation of today's China. Is the party seen more as a curiosity than a power to be feared ? Mao, who represented all that was revolutionary, totalitarian and feared, is now treated as a park attraction where the whole familly goes. Mao would turn in his grave if he saw all the corruption and capitalist potential with the souvenirs and ticket sales he has created around his defunct body (probably
best if he does not turn in his grave: I imagine that would scare quite a few chinese tourists).
With those thoughts in mind, I returned to the embassy for lunch and my meetings to arrange my trip to Tibet.
The better part of the afternoon is devoted to that topic.
After a delicious dinner with the ambassador, I watch a DVD with them and return to my blissfull state of sleep.
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maryse
non-member comment
l'impression d'un deja-vu....