Mao's 100 Kuai Note

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the mausoleum. It has been many years since I last joined the crowds to traipse past the body of Chairman Mao Zedong, lying in state in a blockish pillared building in Tiananmen Square. Little had changed. The queue was long, the guards bossy and officious. But something was a little different.

Mao currency counts for plenty, I found. Corruption, it seems, has penetrated to the very foot of the chairman's crystal sarcophagus.

Arriving to view the remains, I was waved aside by a plainclothes policeman who conveyed to me in broken English that I needed to cross the road to deposit my bag. I dutifully followed him across the Square, left my belongings at the cloackroom and walked back with him while he struggled to make conversation with the ignorant foreign tourist.

"Is this your first visit to China?"

I decided to save trouble by replying, in English, that perhaps it was in the case of the Chairman.

"100 kuai," he said. I looked at him, puzzled. He repeated the figure. "Give me 50 kuai, I help you." I affected greater confusion. "What do you mean?" I said. I was rather fascinated by this direct approach in the centre of a plaza that must boast more police per square foot than almost any other public place on earth.

He tried again. "Give me 100 kuai, you go faster. You must give me 100 kuai for my help." He gestured to the cloakrooom and then to the queue of thousands snaking its way up to the steps of the mausoleum. By now I was deeply intrigued -- and even a little nervous. Would he make things difficult if I didn't give him something? I handed him 100 kuai and said: "Why?" He took my arm and hustled me to near the front of the queue. "You stand here. Quickly, quickly."

I have to say I was surprised. Not by his attempt to help me jump the queue but by the sheer brazenness of his approach. I pretended shock. "This is a queue. These people have waited for hours. It's very wrong to do this." I marched back towards the rear of the line. The security officer raced along behind me and tried again to take me to the front of the queue. "You must wait long time here." He took my arm again. I continued to the back of the queue. He turned to a colleague, laughing delightedly at the naivete of this foreign simpleton and said in Chinese "This foreigner is trying to wait in line."

He was clearly entertained at the thought that someone had just handed him about a week's wages and was now refusing to take advantage of the privilege that could be purchased with that single red 100 kuai note embossed with a picture of Mao himself . Finally he abandoned the unequal battle to persuade the foreigner to buy herself into a prime position. Nor did he return the 100 kuai -- about 6 pounds.

But then, to be fair, I had never expected him to do so. I did feel it was money well spent to discover just exactly how much dishonesty was to be found beside the building that is the very symbol of Communist Party ideology. I found I was not the only visitor to run into such overt extortion as this tale tells.

Reader, I did, finally glimpse the late Great Helsman. Security guards allow no time to pause as the crowd shuffles past. I was left to wonder whether this Mao was of wax or the real thing. A wonderful account of the embalming of Mao is to be found in the excellent book by Mao's doctor: "The Private Life of Chairman Mao." It's a gripping yarn and, to my mind, one of the best depictions ever written of one of the defining personalities of the 20th century. Here's a taste.. "We injected a total of twenty-two litres. The results were shocking. Mao’s face was bloated, as round as a ball, and his neck was now the width of his head. His skin was shiny, and the formaldehyde oozed from his pores like perspiration. His ears were swollen too, sticking out from his head at right angles. The corpse was grotesque."

And, if you fancy a visit, here's a helpful introduction for travellers. You will be following in the footsteps of many luminaries, including even Mike Tyson as recounted by one of my favourite China blogs, danwei.org.

Watch out for those helpful, if burly, men in dark trousers and a white shirt. Their assistance could come at a price.

Comments

[Raj]

I will flatly refuse to ever visit Chairman Mao's mausoleum. Would I visit Hitler's if he had one? Nope. Same thing applies for Stalin, Lenin, PolPot, etc. Even Chiang Kai-Shek.

[Euclid]

He was definitely not a policeman, but surely a member of a gang who run an illegal business by helping people bypass queues and other regulations. In big train stations in China, if you have to stand in a long queue to get a train ticket or to have your luggage checked in/out, you will find such people approach you to help you for a sum of money. The presupposition is: they have secret business deals with the staff in the ticket office or at the check-in point. When they approach you, their first question is normally: 'Is this the first time you come here?' In other words, they only prey on strangers who have not heard of their business.(I'm surprised that Jane didn't know this.)

[bear]

Not all things was bad, isn't? Different culture, different ideas. In their eyes, they take you as a person who is just like a person who stands outside a glass windw. You can look, but you never being belong here. Never ever. Only a passing traveller. They don't care who you are, and what you did.They care something else

[Peter]

Mao is a man,a fighter. A politician to live for ever for social welfare.