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In central China’s Nanjie village, crimson flags hang over “East is Red” Square as tourists photograph a gleaming white statue of Mao Zedong. Nearly five decades after his death, the former leader remains a powerful presence in a village often called China’s last Maoist community.

Nostalgia for Mao’s egalitarian ideals is growing as memories of his turbulent rule fade and China confronts a slowing economy and inequality. Nanjie still operates according to Maoist principles of shared ownership, even though the rest of the country abandoned that economic model. Murals of Mao cover the village, while guides describe how cooperative ownership in local businesses finances free housing for residents.

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I still revere him very much.

“I still revere him very much,” said Xie Kaiyue, a 22-year-old local university student. She said young people in the village, including herself, were not as strong-spirited as in the past and that “people were purer.” Visitors pass uniform apartment blocks and socialist slogans in electric carts as they hear about the village’s cooperative system.

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I think young people in the village and, actually, myself, aren’t as strong-spirited as in the past. People were purer.

About 500 kilometers north, in Shanxi province’s mountain village of Dazhai, tourists revisit an era when Mao dominated China’s political and social life. Dazhai was once promoted as a national model after residents transformed its dry hills into irrigated fields. “People didn’t have enough to eat or to wear,” said Li, a 64-year-old visitor from Xi’an. “But the whole country was full of vigor, and there was a spirit of struggling with heaven, earth, and people to change every aspect of China. Of course I miss it.”

Dazhai now sells posters, playing cards, crockery and copies of Mao’s “Little Red Book.” Yet public references to the darker chapters of his rule remain tightly censored. The Cultural Revolution, launched by Mao in 1966, targeted intellectuals as “class enemies” and closed schools, while collectivization and economic mismanagement contributed to the Great Famine. The supplied report ends while continuing its account of Mao’s legacy.

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People didn’t have enough to eat or to wear. But the whole country was full of vigor, and there was a spirit of struggling with heaven, earth, and people to change every aspect of China. Of course I miss it.