Mao’s body endured time, critics to get embalmed

Days after Communist China’s founding father Mao Zedong died 40 years ago the problem of what to do with his corpse was becoming increasingly heated — literally.

Mr Mao himself had requested cremation, but powerful officials, including his mercurial widow Jiang Qing, decided he would join the likes of Vladimir Lenin and Ho Chi Minh in being embalmed and put on display.

Before the natural processes of decay could take hold, Xie Piao, an official overseeing an experimental thermoelectric cooling project, was summoned in the middle of the night and tasked with cooling the corpse.

“No one expected that Chairman Mao would die. So, there were no preparations at all,” said Mr Xie, now 75, who said he then felt “quite proud” to be involved in preserving the Great Helmsman’s body.

He arrived at the cavernous Great Hall of the People four decades ago on Sunday to find the prostrate body of the man who led the Communist party to victory, founding the People’s Republic before plunging it into chaos, in a hastily-constructed glass and wood coffin, at room temperature beneath hot electric lights.

“Our aim was to get the temperature down to 4 or 5 degrees Celsius,” he told AFP adding that some 400 people were involved in the entire project.

“We couldn’t freeze him — that was his doctors’ order,” Mr Xie said.

At the time Chinese refrigeration systems were basic. With Soviet relations still on a war footing, asking Moscow for help was unthinkable and its ally Hanoi rebuffed calls from Beijing for assistance, Mr Xie said.

“I thought the technology was very reliable, it was very simple,” he said in what is believed to be his first interview with foreign media.

Within hours nitrogen gas surrounding the corpse had been bought down to a cool eight degrees Celsius. But that did not prevent Mr Mao’s anointed successor Hua Guofeng berating Mr Xie for using “experimental” techniques.

Senior leaders arrived day and night to bow before the body, adding to the seven-strong refrigeration team’s tensions.

“Once I was so tired I fell asleep in the middle of work. We had no time to sleep for five, seven days,” he said.

Mr Mao’s death on September 9, 1976, is seen as bringing to an end the destructive decade of “Cultural Revolution” he unleashed on his nation.

But the period’s intense political atmosphere still permeated the corridors of the Great Hall.

“It was very serious, no one chatted,” Mr Xie said.

When Ms Jiang arrived to pay respects to her husband, Mr Xie hid among the floral tributes for fear of becoming a focus for her notorious temper, according to an account he published for the first time this year.

Eight days after arriving at the Great Hall, Mr Xie’s work was declared complete. He knows little of the embalming, said to have involved draining the corpse of fluids and injecting it with the chemical preservative formaldehyde.

Mao’s former doctor Li Zhisui published a ghoulish account of the process, describing the former ruler’s head swelling up “like a football”.