'Red tourism' brings prosperity to villagers
Updated: 2007-11-16 14:01
CHANGSHA - The late Chinese revolutionary founder Mao Zedong left his home village not only with a sense of pride but also a source of wealth.
 Shaoshan today has become one of the country's major "red tourism attractions", a place where many Chinese revolutionists were born, lived or fought. [File photo]
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In the central Chinese village of Shaoshan, where Mao was born, local villagers earn money by receiving tourists who are curious about the environment that the great leader came from or in wanting to experience the revolutionary times.
Modern China's first leader spent his childhood in Shaoshan Village during the 1890s, 104 kilometers from Changsha, the Hunan Province capital. His former residence was opened to tourists in 1950 and an increasing number have since made a pilgrimage to this mountain village.
Shaoshan today has become one of the country's major "red tourism attractions", a place where many Chinese revolutionists were born, lived or fought.
Almost all of the village's 450 households earn a decent income from tourists in running restaurants or inns, or in vending Chairman Mao badges or statuettes of him as souvenirs.
"But 30 years ago, opening private businesses was considered to run counter to socialism," said Mao Yushi, party secretary of Shaoshan Village. "It was strictly forbidden during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)."
Mao still remembers how difficult it was to start a business in the village even in the 1980s, some 10 years after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976.
"Many people argued that running private business would bring shame to Chairman Mao and that all merchants were unscrupulous," said Mao Yushi. "An elderly villager felt so frustrated at stopping people from running businesses that he cried bitterly in front of a portrait of Chairman Mao."
Mao Yushi said he went to his fellow villagers houses one after another, talking to them into emancipating themselves from old shackles and embracing non-public sectors of the economy.
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