At 0:10 a.m. on September 9, 1976, the great Chairman Mao passed away, a superstar fell, and the whole country mourned .
Regarding Chairman Mao's death, the leaders convened an emergency meeting. At the meeting, some leaders suggested cremation. After all, for Chairman Mao himself , he actually did not intend to display the body, and even said when he was alive :
"I advocate cremation, and I must not be an exception. I have signed the agreement. It will be very beneficial to do so. If my body is left, it will only increase the burden on the people."
The leaders are very He wanted to deal with Mao Zedong's wishes, but based on some influences, he decided to show Chairman Mao's body to the public after deliberation.
Preservation of remains
After the leaders have made the decision to display the remains, the next thing to think about is the specific question: How to display ? How to preserve the remains? And in what place display? Due to the suddenness of the incident, these tasks became very difficult at the time.
The first step is to protect the remains of from to protect . Relevant leaders found Xu Jing, the deputy director of the party branch secretary of the University of Chinese Medicine at the time.
Xu Jing received the task and immediately began to discuss with national leaders. After a series of discussions, the new national leader Hua Guofeng decided: everything should be done according to Xu Jing's request. Xu Jing immediately made three requests in response to the situation:
The first is that the hospital and fellow experts need to study together, the second is that he needs to personally inspect Chairman Mao's body, and the third is that it takes time to prepare the necessary machinery and medicines.
After Xu Jing and others arrived at Chairman Mao's residence, they started the process of embalming the remains non-stop.At that time, they borrowed Chairman Mao's bathroom as a temporary surgical site, and immediately performed bloodletting on the body and quickly injected embalming fluid into the body.
Although the embalming solution can preserve the body, an important problem caused by the injection of large doses of embalming solution is that the body will swell , In order to better show the body to the public, the swelling needs to be eliminated as soon as possible. For this point, the experts and doctor at the time also had a stone of unease hanging in their hearts.
Fortunately, after 24 hours, the swelling of the corpse subsided significantly. When the corpse was transferred from Zhongnanhai to Great Hall of the People , the appearance of the corpse has become more normal, meeting the doctor's expectations, everyone is worried The stone was finally able to put down some. The
anticorrosion work continued for a long time, until the late night of the 10th. After that, how does protect the appearance of the remains? How to protect the color of the skin, the state of the skin and the facial expression have become things that need to be carefully considered by doctors.
On the one hand, the protection and embalming work of the remains, on the other hand, the rush production of the remains must also be put on the agenda. At that time, the staff immediately re-measured the size of Chairman Mao's body, and the masters of the Hongdu Garment Factory immediately made two sets of clothes: , one was a dark gray tunic suit, and the other was light gray.
After the discussion, they finally chose the light gray tunic suit, and was finalized on the clothing of the remains. From the 11th to the 17th, the condolence and condolence activities of the masses were officially held, and the venue was arranged in the Great Hall of the People North hall .
At that time, as an emergency option, a plexiglass coffin was used to temporarily place the chairman's body.
For the preservation of remains, a very important requirement is low temperature . On the first day of 's condolence activities, the temperature in the hall was controlled below 15 degrees, but due to the large number of people at that time, and the performance of musical instruments would also generate heat, could not actually meet the requirements for indoor low temperature.
This situation has aroused the vigilance of experts and scholars. medical experts and other relevant personnel at the time realized that such a situation was very unfavorable for the preservation of the remains. So on the 18th, that is, after the condolences ended, the central government decided to immediately transfer the remains to a place code-named "769". After
was transferred to the "769" protection room, the relevant personnel soaked the remains to preserve the integrity of the remains as much as possible.. The remains were temporarily stored in "769", and the leadership started new discussions and thinking on how to place the remains.
In order to facilitate the people to pay homage to Chairman Mao's body, it was finally decided to use transparent materials to make the coffin. Among the materials that has excavated at that time, the best material is crystal. Although the crystal coffin has good transparency, its anti-corrosion performance is not good.
In view of this situation, experts, doctors and scholars from Union Hospital pointed out that could not accomplish the preservation and preservation of the remains with crystal coffins alone. After
finalized the use of crystal coffins, the collection of raw materials for the crystal coffins began quickly. Since it was very difficult to find a complete and huge natural crystal at that time, the crystal panels of Chairman Mao's coffin were welded from small crystal panels.
The production of the crystal coffin is not easy, under the unremitting efforts of the relevant technical staff for ten months, in August 1977, the crystal coffin was finally produced . Not only is it completely transparent, allowing people to see Chairman Mao's remains in a real and clear manner; but also the crystal has a very strong hardness. In the test, this crystal coffin can achieve an eighth-level earthquake resistance.
Considering the corrosive effects of cosmetics on the preservation of the remains, doctors at that time chose to use colored light to illuminate Chairman Mao's face , and through the use of light, the expressions of the characters looked soft and vivid.
At that time, my country's processing technology for the remains was not developed, and the processing of the remains of the leaders of the North Korean countries was all with the help of the Soviet Union, so the processing of Chairman Mao's remains at that time gathered the exploration and efforts of many professionals at that time.
So far, the embalming work on the remains has been completed, and the related work on the crystal coffin where the remains are placed has also been completed.
Construction of Chairman Mao Memorial Hall
The production of the crystal coffin has been finalized, and the next issue is the construction of Chairman Mao Memorial Hall.
First of all, the first question is whether to build it? Do you want to go to great lengths to build a memorial? At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Chairman Mao proposed cremation. In his opinion, the previous methods of burial or burial were a waste of resources.
When Chairman Mao visited the West Lake, he saw tombstones of all sizes standing everywhere.
Therefore, as far as Chairman Mao himself is concerned, he is not in favor of going to great lengths to hold funeral ceremonies. After the establishment of the new China , cremation began to develop on a large scale. In 1956, Chairman Mao's secretary wrote a proposal for "Initiating Cremation". At that time, Chairman Mao took the lead in signing the proposal, so for Chairman Mao himself, he was very supportive of cremation. In view of this situation, after the death of Chairman Mao, the leaders at that time were divided on whether to keep the remains or to carry out cremation.
In response to this situation, Deng Xiaoping's response was:
"It is against Chairman Mao's wishes to keep Chairman Mao's body permanently, but the decision was made under the special circumstances at that time to take into account the stability of the country and society."
As a result, the leaders achieved a unified decision: will keep the remains forever. After
integrated many factors, the site selection process of the memorial hall began. According to the memories of famous architects at that time: comprehensively considering various factors, the site of the memorial hall was initially set in five places.
was first built in front of Tiananmen Square. is conveniently located in the center of the city, giving it a more solemn feel. However, the open space in front of Tiananmen Gate was not large at that time, and there was limited space for to build the memorial hall; and if it was built here, it would likely have an impact on traffic . As a result, the scheme was shelved.
Secondly, it is recommended to build it on the north side of Tiananmen, but if it was built on the north side of Tiananmen, the end gates need to be removed, which will damage the integrity of and of the Forbidden City. Therefore, the plan to build on the north side of Tiananmen is also put on hold, and is followed by It is the Jingshan program and the Xiangshan program.
Jingshan Park 's plan is to hollow out the interior of Jingshan, and then build a memorial hall in the cave through a hole, but the project of hollowing out a hill will not be small and time-consuming, and the project will be more difficult to carry out .Based on the above factors, it can be seen that the site selection of Jingshan Park is not a better choice.
The plan of Xiangshan Park was prepared to refer to the construction plan and structural design of Sun Yat-sen's tomb in Nanjing Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. builds the memorial hall in a quiet natural environment, around Fragrant Hill, and integrates the memorial hall and other buildings in Fragrant Hill into a large landscape.
After the discussion and thinking of all parties, none of the above 4 major solutions were adopted. After further discussions with relevant personnel, determined the location of the memorial hall:
The south side of the Monument to the People's Heroes in Tiananmen Square , the Chairman's Memorial Hall was built beside the Monument to the People's Heroes, so that the heroes and the chairman accompany. After the site selection of
is determined, the next question is how to build it. A lot of energy was also spent on the selection of the construction plan. In order to preserve the body of the chairman as much as possible, the memorial hall has relatively high requirements for lighting, but the design of heavy walls and few windows inevitably makes the atmosphere inside the memorial hall seem dull and looks like a mausoleum. Such a design is not ideal. . The
design plan was sent to the leaders, they pointed out:
"Whether the ideological and political line is correct or not is everything, and the ideas conveyed by the design must be distinguished from the traditional feudal ruling class, such as The mausoleum is absolutely not desirable, and the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall needs to be both solemn and cordial." According to incomplete statistics, there were more than 600 design plans for the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall at that time, and the architects included these plans. It can be seen that the design and construction of the memorial hall at that time was a national effort, bringing together all talents.
Under the concerted efforts of the engineering team and construction staff at that time, the construction of the memorial hall took only six months, which was double the rate of the first anniversary as originally planned.
The great man has passed away, and the spirit will live forever
Under the unremitting efforts of the construction staff for six months, in May 1977, the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall was officially completed. The Memorial Hall covers an area of 5.72 hectares with a total area of 33,867 square meters. It lies quietly on the south side of the Monument to the People's Heroes in Tiananmen Square.
Its main body is square in shape, decorated with yellow granite pillars, reliefs, white marble railings, etc. On the front there is a white marble plaque engraved with "Chairman Mao Memorial Hall" six characters, solemn and elegant, solemn and lively, interpreting the Chairman Mao Zedong's personal temperament and spiritual personality.
The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall is not only a place to store Chairman Mao's body, but also a place to display the revolutionary spirit of the revolutionary leadership of the party. The first floor of the Memorial Hall has the North Hall, the Salute Hall and the South Hall. The North Hall is used for related ceremonies and activities. The Salute Hall is the place where the Chairman's crystal coffin is placed. Every year, countless people come to pay their respects to the Chairman's remains. There are also other exhibition halls on the second floor, which display the revolutionary successes and historical achievements of six other important leaders of the Party Central Committee of Chairman Mao's generation.
On the morning of August 18, 1977, Chairman Mao's crystal coffin arrived at the Memorial Hall. On September 9 of the same year, which is the first anniversary of Chairman Mao's death, the completion ceremony was held and it was officially opened to the public.
Although the great man dies, his spirit will not fail. Chairman Mao was finally able to lie quietly in the crystal coffin of the memorial hall and continue to witness the prosperity and development of the motherland. Chairman Mao's achievements and spirit will forever remain in people's hearts, and will continue to be passed on. The "red spirit" will always inspire us to move forward bravely.
