Mao Zedong died in 1976. After his death, Hua Guofeng built a “memorial hall” for him in Tiananmen Square, an above-ground tomb, with the intention of placing Mao in a crystal coffin for worship, as was done in the Soviet Union. This project was then called “Project No. 1”.
Crystal coffin is unprecedented in the world
According to “Su Coffin” written by Zheng Yi, due to the poor relations between China and the Soviet Union at that time, the Chinese Communist Party had no experience in making crystal coffins and keeping the bodies. The first thing to do at that time was to choose the best crystal. Under the guard of the army, the workers of the One-O-Five Mine in Donghai County, Jiangsu Province, selected thirty-two tons of super crystal piece by piece out of tens of thousands of ores and sent them to Beijing by plane and train in batches.
The development of the crystal coffin was delivered to three secret factories in Beijing, Shanghai and Jinzhou to be completed in collaboration. To be on the safe side, the trial production did not dare to use natural crystal, but K9 artificial crystal instead. Coffin No. 1 and No. 2 were rejected because there was more than one image of the “Red Sun” on the wall of the coffin. Finally, the third coffin was successful.
After the success of the experiment, workers began to make the fourth coffin with expensive natural crystal. A year after Mao’s death, a crystal coffin worthy of the name in world history was finally made. In order to cope with earthquakes, war, destruction, attrition and other unexpected events, and made the fifth coffin.
It is said that the final completed crystal coffin, the actual length, width and height data, accurate to one hundredth of a millimeter, less than the thickness of a hair. To ensure that the trapezoid-shaped coffin body vacuum splicing, the ratio of its plate length and width allowed error of one ten thousandth. Crystal coffin quartz purity reached “six nines” – 99.9999%, that is, the impurity content of one millionth. This crystal coffin, no one else in the world can make it.
Simple embalming at the beginning
Crystal coffin has, but how to preserve the Mao corpse is another major problem. On the day of Mao’s death, the body was only generally embalmed, as it was originally to be cremated. It was not expected that there would be a fierce party dispute within the Chinese Communist Party and a resolution to preserve the body was made the next day. This posed a big problem for the experts called in urgently: for long-term embalming, the internal organs had to be removed two hours after death and the blood vessels throughout the body, including capillaries, had to be washed and then injected with an embalming agent. Now the blood was not released in time, it was too late to do long-term embalming.
There was no other choice but to immediately pour the conventional preservative formalin into the remains. No one dared to call a halt when it reached the sixteen liters required by the literature, and it kept filling Mao’s body with swelling and shiny epidermis, with embalming fluid like sweat oozing out of the pores. At the moment, the image of Mao, grotesque, swollen body, face like a balloon, neck head with thick, two ears out. Mao’s personal secretary Zhang Yufeng accused: “You have made the chairman look like this, the central government can agree?”
The experts then used towels with cotton pads to squeeze Mao’s face and neck, trying to squeeze the liquid into the deep and chest cavity. One young doctor used a little too much force and rubbed off a small piece of skin on the right side of his face, shaking with fear. Thanks to a calm old expert, with a cotton swab dabbed with Vaseline and yellow paint carefully, finally can not be seen. After a long time of kneading and squeezing, the hairy face swelling, two ears outward has not obvious, the neck is still thick. But barely can be introduced to debut.
With that, the need for permanent preservation of the remains of the treatment. The experts of the remains conservation team turned to Vietnam, a true disciple of the Soviet Union, for help. Because the Vietnamese not only mastered the full set of secrets of Soviet embalming of remains, and out of the blue and out of the blue. However, fearing to offend the Soviet Union, Vietnam only taught the initial preservation techniques, while the medium and long-term techniques were kept secret. The Chinese Communist Party had to stand on its own feet.
Killing one person quickly to preserve Mao’s corpse
In the book “Ten Years a Dream – Xu Jingxian’s Memoirs of the Cultural Revolution”, Xu Jingxian, who was the secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee, disclosed the little-known relevant inside story, which mentioned that Liu Xiangping, who was then the Minister of Health of the CCP, informed Shanghai that it was necessary for Shanghai to find a fresh corpse and turn a complete plaster face mold of his face immediately after death for permanent preservation. Because the preservation of the body needed a “standard body” for comparison, so that future changes could be observed. However, multiple tests could not be done on Mao’s face, and the face could not be damaged in the slightest, so it was hoped that Shanghai would go one step ahead of the fresh body and obtain the results of the experiment.
So, Shanghai immediately executed one of the condemned prisoners in the court and used the fresh corpse of the death row prisoners for the experiment. In China, the death row inmate also died by lethal injection for the first time, and what exactly he was sentenced to death for, no one is afraid to know now.
Mao’s disemboweled body
Initially, Mao’s body was placed in embalming fluid in the underground operating room of the 301 Hospital of the Chinese Communist Army. From September 1976 to August 1977, Mao’s heart, lungs, stomach, kidneys, intestines, liver, pancreas, bladder, gallbladder, and spleen were removed by specialists recruited from all over the country and soaked in formalin solution. The cavity of the torso was stuffed with formalin-soaked cotton. But Mao’s brain was not removed because the experts did not want to cut open Mao’s head.
Some of these experts had experience in preserving ancient corpses. After dozens of experts, the final decision to take a combination of liquid and gas phase program, and later on a longer-term plan. The so-called combination of liquid and gas phase means that the head and two hands are preserved in the gas phase, while the other parts are preserved in the liquid phase. In order to prevent decay of the remains, the gas phase preservation part must be isolated from oxygen.
Since Mao’s body was changing every day and every hour, the task of the experts was to minimize the changes to the slowest. They found a “stamp method” standard color book to compare the changes in Mao’s skin tone.
In August 1977, after Mao’s “tomb” was built, his body and several jars of formalin-soaked entrails were transferred to the “memorial hall. After processing, Mao’s body was moved into a crystal coffin. The body was preserved in the crystal coffin by a combination of gas and liquid, with Mao’s clothes encased in liquid and only his face in a gaseous environment. After the public visit, Mao’s body will be lowered to a closed container in the basement. In addition, a tube is inserted into Mao’s neck to allow for the infusion of formalin liquid into Mao’s remains.
Accompanying Mao’s dead
What many people do not know is that an unknown male deceased accompanied Mao in his grave, as his age, weight, size and cause of death were close to Mao. The purpose of preserving his body was to experiment the preservation techniques intended to be applied on Mao’s remains, first on his body, and then on Mao’s body when successful. Therefore, every once in a while, experts took a number of small particles from Mao and the unknown deceased and sent them to the relevant research institutions to check the preservation of the tissue structure of the remains.
Mao’s corpse almost corrupted
Although Mao’s crystal coffin is sealed, but staff from time to time need to put their hands in for Mao’s remains corpse finishing clothes, so it is inevitable that bacteria seep in. Plus the body was exposed to the gaseous state for a long time, which will accelerate the contamination of bacteria. According to Zhu Peikang, an executive member of the CPPCC who participated in the preservation of Mao’s corpse, in 1999, Mao’s remains almost deteriorated and the Memorial Hall was suspended. It was only after the repair that it was restored to its original form.
According to Zhu Peikang, China’s current technology can preserve Mao’s body for 50 years.
Conclusion
In 1976, when China’s national economy was on the verge of “collapse”, the Chinese Communist Party spent huge sums of money to preserve Mao’s corpse and build his tomb, in total disregard of the interests of the Chinese people. And what right does Mao, the chief culprit who started all the movements and killed tens of millions of Chinese people since the founding of the CCP, have to occupy the center of Beijing, accept the worship of the nation, and continue to kill and deceive the Chinese people? Obviously, there is no need to preserve Mao’s corpse at all, and the existence of his grave has completely destroyed the feng shui of Tiananmen Square.
A few years ago, there was an online discussion about this, and most netizens thought that the “Mao crystal coffin” should be moved out of Tiananmen Square because “he was not only a killer but also cost a lot of money”. Today, there is a growing consensus that it is most fortunate for the Chinese people that the Communist Party and Mao are out of the lives of the Chinese people.
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