Mao Nostalgia Endures in China’s Last Maoist Villages

In Nanjie, central China’s self-styled “last Maoist village,” tourists photograph a gleaming white statue of Mao Zedong while residents continue to live under shared-ownership principles. Murals of the former leader cover the village, and electric carts carry visitors past uniform apartment blocks marked with socialist slogans.

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I still revere him very much.

Nanjie’s cooperative ownership model funds free housing for residents. For Xie Kaiyue, a 22-year-old university student from the village, Mao remains an object of admiration despite his death decades before she was born. "I still revere him very much," she said. She added that young people today were less strong-willed than earlier generations and that "People were purer."

The village’s nostalgia reflects a broader interest in Mao’s egalitarian ideals as memories of his rule fade and China faces slower economic growth and inequality. Mao led the 1949 communist revolution and promoted collectivized ownership as a way to build industry and unite the country.

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People were purer.

That legacy remains sharply contested. Historians blame his policies for mass starvation and millions of deaths, while the Chinese Communist Party continues to portray him as a revolutionary hero. The party acknowledged after his death that the Cultural Revolution was a “grave mistake.”

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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.

In Dazhai, a mountain village in Shanxi province once promoted by Mao as a national model, visitors recall a period when he dominated political and social life. Li, a 64-year-old tourist from Xi’an, remembered poverty but also a national spirit of struggle. Shops now sell Mao posters, playing cards, crockery and copies of the “Little Red Book,” while public discussion of the Cultural Revolution and other dark chapters of his rule remains tightly censored.

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Of course I miss it.