Greetings From China: Ming, Mao And Kung Pao Chicken

On Thursday we were taken by our guides to see Chairman Mao's body. Whilst seeing the founder of Communist China up close and personal was an interesting experience, the most revealing part of the trip came from the Chinese tourists.

Here we were, 32 years after Mao's death, and he is still revered as the greatest ever leader in China. In fact, it's more than that. Whilst there are a lot of statues and portraits around, showing he is respected by officials, the long queues and the huge display of flowers outside his body shows the regard that he is held by ordinary people in modern day China.

I found this slightly unusual, and made this comment to one of our tour guides. I suggested that when Blair, Brown or Thatcher dies, they wouldn't get the same treatment - that no British (or Western) politician would be lying in state three decades later.

The tour guide looked at me slightly strangely, before telling me that the situations were completely different. Mao isn't merely a politician, he is known as the man who founded New China, saving it from the corrupt leaders. I was told that to Chinese people, Mao is the greatest politician there ever was, and that he is irreplaceable.

Friday began slightly unusually, with a tour of a sewage factory, demonstrating how Beijing was cleaning up for the Olympics.

The afternoon saw us take a trip to the outskirts of the city, to a small village. Designed to show us the communist state in action, the tour showed us retirement communities with the elderly being well looked after, and the state taking care of impoverished people by providing basic living facilities.

A revealing tour, the trip also took us to a recently rebuilt Buddhist temple in the village.