SATV, Kathmandu, Sept. 07 - 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.
Mao, who led the 1949 communist revolution against the ruling nationalists, ushered in an era of collectivised ownership he argued would drive industry and unite the country, but his drastic policies are also blamed by historians for mass starvation and millions of deaths.
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" -- a verdict upheld by subsequent leaders.
In Nanjie, countless murals of the former Chinese leader are plastered around the village.
Residents still live under Maoist principles of shared ownership, while the rest of the country moved on from that economic model.
"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," she said.
Nearby, electric carts whisked visitors past uniform apartment blocks plastered with socialist slogans as guides explained how cooperative ownership in local enterprises funds free housing for residents.
Around 500 kilometres (310 miles) north, in the mountain village of Dazhai in Shanxi province, once promoted by Mao as a national model after locals terraformed its arid hills into irrigated fields, tourists reminisce about an era when the Great Helmsman dominated political and social life.
"(People) didn't have enough to eat or to wear," Li, a 64-year-old tourist from Xi'an, said of his childhood.
"But... 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," the retiree said.
"Of course I miss it."
Now, Dazhai is overflowing with shops selling items that support Mao's personality cult -- posters, playing cards, and crockery emblazoned with his image, and the "Little Red Book" of his quotations.
Still, references to dark chapters of his decades in absolute power are tightly censored in public discourse.
The decade-long episode instigated by Mao in 1966 saw intellectuals brutally targeted as "class enemies" and schools shuttered, setting China back for years in education and development.
Private property and land were collectivised, while economic management pushed the country to the Great Famine, which the government says killed around 15 million people, while historians estimate around 20-43 million.
In one museum, text mentioning the Cultural Revolution had been crudely scraped off signage.
"Everything you see in the public domain... is the party line. No one is allowed to deviate from this," said scholar Xu Chenggang, who was targeted as a child in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution because his father was labelled a "rightist".
Mao's face is printed on banknotes, his portrait overlooks Tiananmen Square, and his body is preserved in a mausoleum.
Every year new movies and TV shows dramatising Mao's life beam the message of his great deeds to public.
Public discussion has been squeezed further under current leader Xi Jinping, who warns against "historical nihilism", or narratives contradicting the party's own.(AFP)
