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Every yearly, on the anniversary of the birth and death of Chairman Mao , there are long queues in front of the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Among them are revolutionary predecessors, leading cadres, and ordinary people.
Chairman Mao Memorial Hall
People come to pay tribute to Chairman Mao’s remains and express their gratitude and longing for the great man. At the same time, remember history, never forget national humiliation, inspire yourself to move forward and contribute to the construction of the motherland in the new era.
Back then, after Chairman Mao passed away, the central government ordered the emergency manufacture of crystal coffin . Until now, Chairman Mao has been lying quietly in his own crystal coffin for 46 years.
He was wearing a gray Zhongshan outfit , and his appearance was still lifelike, as if he was sleeping soundly. After years of baptism and the lingering of hundreds of millions of people, the crystal coffin is still as perfect as new.
People can’t help but wonder, what’s magical about crystal coffin ? How is it made? Why can no one copy successfully?
Chairman 0Body of Chairman Mao
Cremation or retaining the body, Fei Siliang
At 00:00 on September 9, 1976, the great leader Chairman Mao stopped breathing and left the world forever. The day before, he also reviewed the documents for three hours. Although the disease had seriously damaged Chairman Mao's body, no one expected that he would leave in a hurry.
The whole country was shocked and fell into grief. The United Nations has been on the recess for this for a day. Internationally, Chairman Mao was regarded as the greatest hero of the times, and he influenced and changed world history.
How should we treat the body of such a great man?
As early as the end of April 1956, Chairman Mao solemnly signed a document advocating cremation. At that time, more than 100 leaders including Zhou Premier , Zhu De and more than 100 leaders signed on it.
Chairman Mao
Traditional burial not only requires making coffins, but also burial and burial, which is laborious and expensive. Some people prepare coffins early and have to stay with them for decades, so they feel depressed. Moreover, tombs occupy a large amount of land, which is not conducive to grain production and environmental protection. Therefore, the country decided to advocate cremation. The leaders will take the lead first, and then promote it across the country.
At that time, crematoriums had been built in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, and other small and medium-sized cities began to build the latest crematoriums one after another. Of course, cremation is still burial. The state has no mandatory regulations and fully respects the individual's choices. Chairman Mao led the working people to turn over and become masters, and is the "great savior" of the Chinese people.
Top to Chairman Mao’s remains
His death is like a bolt from the blue, both men and women, young and old, crying from the bottom of their hearts, and some even fainted from the crying. They couldn't bear to watch Chairman Mao leave. Everyone hoped that he would be alive forever and wanted to keep Chairman Mao. How can
realize this wish?
The central government decided to build a memorial hall and put Chairman Mao’s body in the coffin for the people to admire and commemorate for generations.
making coffin materials, causing controversy
Regarding the material of coffin, experts discussed it. Ordinary materials are definitely not good. If you want to know the closed preservation effect, the best one is golden nanmu .
It is said that a tomb robber stole a golden nanmu coffin.
Golden nanmu
He likes to eat braised pork, so he put a bowl of braised pork into the coffin of golden nanmu. Then, a long journey, from the warm south to the cold north, took several months.
Open the coffin and take out the braised pork. Not only does the meat not rot, but it also has a warm air. This person ate this bowl of meat while it was hot, and it felt like it was the same as what I just made. The legend of
is a bit mysterious, but it also shows that the golden nanmu is indeed sealed with excellent effect.
The four famous ancient woods, the first place is Nanmu . Golden nanmu is even rarer. It is yellow in color and has gold wire, and is hard in texture. It is buried underground for thousands of years and will not rot easily, nor is it easy to crack. Moreover, ant cannot bite and cannot be penetrated by water. It also has a faint fragrance and has the effect of deworming.
Lenin
Because of its long growth cycle, it takes hundreds of years to grow to make large furniture. Therefore, the price is expensive. In ancient times, only wealthy families and royal families could afford golden nanmu.
Can Chairman Mao’s body be preserved? After careful consideration, the experts found it unfeasible. Because the more important reason for preserving Chairman Mao’s body is that the general public can pay tribute to Chairman Mao’s remains.
Golden nanmu is opaque and cannot achieve this function. At this time, the expert group thought that Lenin coffin was a crystal coffin, but no one had seen it before.
Someone remembered that when Mr. Sun Yat-sen When Mr. Sun Yat-sen passed away, the Soviet Union once gave him a crystal coffin, but it was useless later. It will be much easier to use this coffin as a model.
Sun Yat-sen
In a warehouse in Xiangshan Park, people found this small coffin that had not moved for 40 years, which was only 175 cm long. It is covered with thick dust. As the dust was swept away layer by layer, what appeared in front of everyone was a steel coffin made of glass on the top cover.
This is not the true meaning of the crystal coffin. Moreover, the glass of the coffin lid is thin, so it is impossible to seal and insulate. Everyone was very disappointed.
has no template, so overcome the difficulties and create them yourself!
After careful consideration by the Party Central Committee and the expert group, they unanimously decided to use the best crystal in China as the raw material to create a veritable crystal coffin for Chairman Mao.
This matter is of great importance, so it is called the " Central No. 1 " task.
Chairman Mao's crystal coffin
overcomes the difficulties of technology and relies on innovation
The second day after Chairman Mao passed away, Beijing 608 Factory received the task of designing a crystal coffin. Time is tight and the task is heavy. Everyone turns grief into strength and builds up a twelve-point spirit.
The idea given by the central leaders is that the design of the crystal coffin should be solemn and grand, with national characteristics, and should be consistent with the image of a great man. Chairman Mao is tall, so the space inside the coffin should be spacious. The size is required to be 240 cm long, 100 cm wide, and the material thickness is 30 cm.
In addition, it must be able to resist the influence and obstacles of external forces such as earthquakes.
first talk about the appearance. Since the crystal coffin was designed and manufactured for a long time, in order to protect the remains, a glass cover was first made instead. The glass cover was designed into a trapezoid by a professor from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in . The appearance effect is very good, and the leaders are very satisfied.
Top to Chairman Mao’s remains
The workers made a crystal coffin model according to this ratio of one to four. The board does not need the support of a metal frame, it looks crystal clear and has an excellent display effect. Experts unanimously agree on this design.
Therefore, the crystal coffin trapezoidal design has begun to take shape. It is made of five plates spliced together with the upper cover, front and back plugs, and the coffin on both sides. Beijing 603 and 605 also have a glass factory, responsible for the production of the first three boards; Shanghai Xinhu Glass Factory and Jinzhou 115 Factory are responsible for the boards on both sides of the coffin.
The silicon material and quartz glass produced by
Factory 605 are the best at home and abroad, and they are responsible for checking the overall quality of the board.
Let’s talk about the plate making process. The traditional "qi refining" process takes three years to anneale and eliminate internal stress. And it is difficult to have transparent, bubble-free and flawless effects. Moreover, the crystal is melted and solidified, and the thickness of the large plate is only ten centimeters, which is a big difference from the specified thirty centimeters.
Image from the Internet
After many tests, no success. It not only delays time and affects progress, but also wastes a lot of raw materials.
At that time, thirty-two tons of high-quality crystals were selected from the East China Sea 3,000 tons crystal mine. The plane and train were transported to Beijing in three times, and the other ten tons were divided into two, giving the glass factory in Shanghai and Jinzhou .
Raw materials are wasted less, so leaders and workers both tried carefully.But the old craftsmanship can no longer solve the problem. Where is the breakthrough?
One day, a technical worker who has worked in Factory 605 for many years, found that using small crystal panels to splice into large crystal panels can solve the problem of stress in the glass.
He summarized the six-character key points of "pull, molding, and splicing" for the new technology. First make a small crystal panel of twenty centimeters square, and then weld the small crystal panel into a large crystal panel of more than two meters long and one meter wide.
pictures are from the Internet
In this way, it can not only ensure the thickness, but also solve problems such as flaws, many bubbles, and opacity.
is easy to talk about, but it is much more difficult to operate. Because the melting point of the crystal is very high, with 2,000 degrees Celsius, it can only be successful when welding at the moment of melting.
Just as everyone was hesitating about whom to weld, the experienced old worker Shi Weicheng stood up, and he said with a burning look: "I'll come on!"
He saw him put on a thick metal protective suit, soaked his feet in the cold water, took the jet lamp handed over by his colleague, and stared at the weld with all his attention.
At this moment, there was only the narrow slit between two small crystal panels in his eyes and heart.
Image source from the Internet
When the crystal panels start to melt, he immediately soldered them together. Smoke was emitting from the thick protective suit, and colleagues kept watering him and cooling him.
Finally, the last small crystal board was welded, and everyone cheered, and Shi Weicheng's body was already wet with sweat.
After measurement, its purity reaches the industry's highest level of "six nines", that is, 99.9999%! So far, no second crystal panel of such high purity has been released.
Make a crystal panel well, and the next step is to cut, grind and polish.
This large crystal panel is not only the highest purity, but also the largest crystal piece in the world. I wanted to cut and polish as required, but couldn't find the right equipment.
Image source from the Internet
either cannot process such thick ones or cannot put down such large ones. Finally, I found equipment that could barely be processed in , the first machine tool factory in , but it was difficult to do it.
First of all, although the crystal material is hard, it has no toughness and is very easy to break. When grinding, a grinding disc with a diameter of 100 cm and a weight of one ton is required to press onto the crystal panel.
Secondly, during the polishing process, the crystal panel generates heat of up to 100 degrees Celsius, and it will break instantly when it touches cold things.
In addition, the aftershocks released by Tangshan earthquake from time to time made the workers' nerves even tighter.
One night, everyone found another earthquake and something was smashed down on the roof from time to time. The worker who was operating immediately stopped the machine, jumped onto the machine tool, and then carefully lie on the baby's crystal board, praying in his heart that he would never smash it!
Old photos of the Tangshan earthquake
Worker lying on the crystal board, sweating on his head, and his heart was like a drumming. Fortunately, I finally escaped this disaster.
In order for the crystal to successfully turn it into a crystal coffin, the technicians were really walking on thin ice, fearing that all their efforts would be wasted if they were not careful.
At the end of November 1976, the first crystal coffin was completed. It successfully passed the eighth-magnitude earthquake test and also strictly inspected sealing and thermal insulation.
was sent to the History Museum in early December. During the acceptance inspection, the central leaders hoped to improve the problem of human figures that vaguely reflected on the crystal coffin.
Five months later, the crystal coffin used vacuum coating technology, and no reflected figure could be seen from any angle. The central leadership also made suggestions that Chairman Mao’s face should look more vivid. Therefore, the technicians made rectifications on the lighting and optical beauty inside the coffin.
Chairman Mao’s body
Because the body is not suitable for applying cosmetics on the face, in order to make the face feel makeup, you must rely on the lighting effect. The ultraviolet and infrared rays in the lighting will affect the preservation of the remains, and even if there are antiseptic drugs, it is inevitable.
How can we not affect the long-term preservation of the body, but also make Chairman Mao’s face come to life and rosy?
Medical and optical experts propose to use the cold lighting in the coffin to achieve the effect of optical plastic surgery. That is, using special points on the face of the great man in the coffin to cast colorful cold light, which visually changes the fatness and color of the face.
Beijing 608 Factory designer Li Jiaying led the team to use a head specimen that has been preserved for many years to perform translucent color matching experiments, and simulated and debugged along the way of admiration. Finally, the effect of rosy complexion and reduced wrinkles, as if it was sleepy.
pays homage to Chairman Mao’s remains
. This lighting system that realizes optical plastic surgery is particularly well concealed. Its miniature lens is placed on both sides of the coffin bed, and light of different colors is projected to reflect to various parts of the great man's face. If a light is off, the optical beauty effect of the entire lighting system will not be affected.
lighting lamp uses a fiber-conducting xenon lamp, which has high brightness and long life. It is also a strong cold light source , which will not affect the preservation of the remains and is safe and reliable. This is the most advanced optical technology at that time and is a guiding suggestion given by the light source expert of New China Cai Zuquan .
Chinese Academy of Sciences famous optical expert Wang Daheng was also invited. Through repeated and careful calculations, he obtained the optimal balance point where the shear force between each coffin board reached the minimum. With such a magical operation, the five coffin boards are tightly tied together, and even without adhesive material, it will not collapse.
Top to Chairman Mao’s remains
The production team made five crystal coffins in succession. The last crystal coffin weighing 2 tons made in August 1977 is perfect and has not surpassed it yet. It is the crystallization of the collective wisdom of the Chinese, and it is also full of the people's deep feelings and deepest nostalgia for Chairman Mao.
On September 9, 1977, on the first anniversary of Chairman Mao’s death, people saw great men sleeping in the clean and flawless crystal coffin at Chairman Mao’s Memorial Hall. I sincerely thank those who have put in the effort to make the crystal coffin. It is you who give the people who respect Chairman Mao the opportunity to see the peaceful face of the great man up close.
Time flies, forty-six years have passed, and we can still see the beloved Chairman Mao lying there quietly, as if he has never left.
Chairman Mao
He is witnessing China's rise and silently escorting China's stability, unity and economic growth.
A great man of a generation lives in the eyes of the people and always lives in the hearts of every Chinese.
