A town in Tibet is to be permanently reminded of its new master:
A huge statue of Mao Zedong, whose Red Armies entered the deeply Buddhist Himalayan region in 1951 to extend Communist Party rule, is to stand in a newly built square in the town of Gongga.
The 7.5m (24½ft) figure, weighing 35 tonnes, is a gift to the small Tibetan town just south of the regional capital, Lhasa, from the central Chinese city of Changsha, where Mao was born.
One government official explained the gift, worth 6.5 million yuan (£465,000): “Tibet does not need only material development, it must also meet the more spiritual needs of its people.”
That’s quite some irony, coming from the representative of an occupying power which has done its best over the past 50 years to destroy what was one of the most extraordinary religious cultures in the world.
Mao’s newest statue wears a traditional Mao suit. However, Mr Zhu [the sculptor] has changed his posture. “I noticed that he liked standing with both hands behind his back. It made him look more intimate and more easygoing.” His features, too, have been altered to suit his Tibetan audience. Mr Zhu said: “I tried to understand how Tibetans feel towards Mao. Because they have deep feelings about Buddha, I tried to make Mao more like that, with a plumper face.”
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