Shaoshan
National 5A Tourist Attraction; Mao Zedong’S Birthplace And Former Residence · Xiangtan, Hunan
A valley of paddy and low hills in central Hunan where Mao Zedong was born in 1893, and the most visited site of political pilgrimage in China. The house he grew up in is a modest farmstead of mud brick and grey tile, thirteen rooms around a courtyard with a lotus pond in front, and it is preserved with the family furniture, the kitchen range and the bedroom where he was born; the queue to walk through it runs all day. Around it the village has become a complex of memorial buildings - a large bronze statue of Mao standing in a square where visitors lay baskets of flowers and bow, a comprehensive museum of his life, the ancestral hall of the Mao clan, and the school he attended. The politics are unavoidable and openly on display: coach parties in matching caps, red songs over loudspeakers, and vendors selling badges and Little Red Books. It is also a genuinely pretty valley, and the surrounding hills have walking trails that almost nobody uses.
Shaoshan Village, Shaoshan City, Xiangtan, Xiangtan, Hunan, China
Daily 8:00-16:00 with last entry 15:50. Free, but by compulsory real-name booking up to 7 days ahead in one of four time slots; private cars are barred from the core area and visitors transfer to a 3-yuan eco-shuttle.