His portraits vanish
Last week thousands of shirtsleeved Chinese patiently queued up in the broiling Peking sun to visit the pagoda-like structure on Tian'anmen Square that contains the earthly remains of Mao Tse-tung. Inside the air-conditioned mausoleum they divided into two columns and filed past the crystal case in which the embalmed body of the Great Helmsman reposes under a coverlet of red satin.
Even as Mao continued to receive the respectful homage of the masses, however, his once towering image as the infallible leader of the great proletarian revolution was being systematically downgraded. To begin with, some of his formerly ubiquitous...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
