Businesses feed off growing nostalgia for Mao Zedong

From red pork dishes to badges and little red books, almost everything bearing the mark of Mao Zedong is popular on the mainland, as businesses try to make money from the man and his controversial legacy.

Tang Ruiren, 84, a distant relative and close neighbour of Mao's family, is one of the key figures making Mao's favourite cuisine a household name. As an illiterate rice farmer in Shaoshan, Hunan province, she began selling mung bean and rice porridge to tourists in a tiny business she set up in 1984 with only 1.7 yuan to her name.

But she did not start really building her fortune until three years later when she opened a small family eatery under the name Mao's Restaurant in the heart of Shaoshan, the birthplace of Mao, where she serves several of the chairman's favourite dishes, such as braised pork belly in soy sauce and fire-toasted fried fish, which were widely known among the locals in the town.

Her humble restaurant provided the foundation of a multi-billion yuan business empire, the Mao Group, with 300 branches on the mainland. Its success exemplifies how the legacy of the Chinese icon has become a cash cow amid a revival of Mao nostalgia, which got a major boost on the 100th anniversary of his birth in 1993 and has been growing ever since.

The former revolutionary was born into a peasant family and December 26 marks the 120th anniversary of his birth. Tang's daughter, Mao Taozhi, said Tao attributed the success of Mao's Restaurant to the public's infatuation with Chairman Mao. Elderly Tang is still the president of Mao Group company.

"Mao's Restaurant could only become what it is today because of the love and reverence the Chinese people, and even people from other countries, hold for Chairman Mao," said Mao Taozhi. "Those who've dined at Mao's Restaurant did not simply come for delicacies, but to come to have a feel for him, to express their respect for and pay tribute to him."