Shaoshan Mao Zedong Memorial Museum, Hunan, China

4yewpau 5:00 PM Dec 23, 2015

A place to know the leader
Here you get to know the leader more with belonging and the life around him. All is being guided and many interesting item shown.

4Edgar K 5:00 PM Nov 14, 2015

Mao Town for tourists
We visited Shaoshan in November 2015 expecting it to be touristy and artificial which is exactly what it was. Don't write it off because of at though, it was definitely worth a visit if you are in the area. We caught a D-class train from Changsha (¥30, 30mins) then a shuttle bus to town (¥5). On the bus there was a person speaking in Chinese the whole way trying to sell tours of Shaoshan. We just hopped off the bus at the stop in town and were surprised that everyone else stayed on the bus and paid for the tour... A tour is completely unnecessary! The bus drops you off at Mao Zedong Square where there is a little office to get a ticket. The ticket is free but they will ask for your passport and put your details in the computer. With our free ticket, we visited the square, the Mao Zedong Memorial Museum, Mao Zedong Thematical Museum, Mao's primary school (Nan'an School) and Former Residence of Mao Zedong. The memorial museum was actually very good as all the captions were in English and we were surprised to see some (very subtle) admission of fault regarding the Cultural Revolution etc. We also noted that they spoke of Taiwan as a country. You can walk around the museum with the free but very rushed tour group (Chinese language only) or just wonder off on your own as we did. The only downside was that we couldn't find any decent food in the area. The main street is lined with identical restaurants aimed at servicing bus loads of tour groups so we skipped those and ended up walking all the way back to the main town near the train station before we found anything. So either bring your own snacks or be prepared to dine in the tourist restaurants. Overall, we had a good day in Shaoshan and we are glad that we made the trip!