From Los Angeles Times:
You can’t help but wonder whether Mao Tse-tung would be rolling over in his mausoleum if he could hear the ka-ching! of cash registers ringing up the amazing array of tchotchkes, from snow globes to glow-in-the-dark figurines, sold with his likeness.
Or if the founder of Communist China, who fretted about “the serious tendency toward capitalism among the well-to-do peasants,” could hear this blithe assertion by a visitor here: “I think that what Chairman Mao really intended was for Chinese people to get rich.”
A wave of Mao nostalgia is sweeping through China, and it crests here in his birthplace, the village of Shaoshan (pop. 1,387). The Hunan province town — a cross between Bethlehem and Mount Vernon — is expected to draw a record 3.5 million visitors this year, most of them Chinese paying homage to their late leader.
