Fifty Years

The crimson flags on Nanjie village's "East is Red" Square hang limp in the sweltering summer heat as a trickle of tourists take photos with a towering statue of Chairman Mao Zedong, still gleaming white almost 50 years after he died. The Great Helmsman, who died September 9, 1976, is still very much a fixture in central Henan province's Nanjie -- often dubbed "China's last Maoist village".

Nostalgia for Mao's egalitarian ideals is growing in China as memories of his turbulent rule fade and the country grapples with a slowing economy and inequality. While the ruling Chinese Communist Party maintains Mao was a revolutionary hero, it publicly acknowledged after his death that his devastating Cultural Revolution was a "grave mistake".

"People were purer"

"I still revere him very much," Xie Kaiyue, a 22-year-old local university student, said of Mao, who died almost three decades before she was born. "I think young people in the village and, actually, myself, aren't as strong-spirited as in the past. People were purer."

In Dazhai, once promoted by Mao as a national model, tourists reminisce about an era when the Great Helmsman dominated political and social life. "The whole country was full of vigour, and there was a spirit of struggling with heaven, earth, and people to change every aspect of China," said one retiree. "Of course I miss it." References to the dark chapters of Mao's decades in absolute power remain tightly censored in public discourse.