Red tourism dreams wake up to a nightmare

Seeing red: (Clockwise from top) Men visiting an attraction featuring Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhou Dunyi, women visiting a statue of late Chinese chairman Mao Zedong and a man looking at exhibits at a ‘red tourism’ site featuring Chinese Communism. — Reuters

RUCHENG COUNTY: In the heart of an impoverished village in southern China, a life-sized statue of Mao Zedong sits on a platform adorned with intricate stonework, flanked by a diorama of Red Army soldiers and traditional brick-and-tile homes with curved roofs.

Officials have spent a small fortune on the project that has transformed the village of Shazhou, in Hunan province, into an open-air museum dedicated to the Chinese Communist Party. But few tourists have come to peer at the inscription at the foot of Mao’s statue, or take selfies in front of the heroes of the revolution.