From the New York Times (link)
Heroic opera boomed from huge speakers and white-gloved paramilitary police officers carried elaborate funeral wreaths as senior Communist officials bowed low today before the reputed burial mound of China’s first emperor.
The ceremony was a lavish display calculated to woo the Taiwanese public and instill national pride across China. Leaders from the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp Parliament, and top executives from state-controlled Chinese industries, joined a senior Taiwanese opposition lawmaker and 700 Taiwanese businesspeople in paying their respects to Huang Di, China’s semi-mythical first emperor, who is said to have lived 5,000 years ago.
