According to Xinhua there was a convention yesterday to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Long March at the Great Hall of the People. Without knowing of this event my son wanted to visit the Beijing Military Museum today, like he used to do with his grandfather in previous years. To his great disappointment the main exhibition site with all the interesting warfare machinery exhibts was closed due to renovation. Instead we had to queue in front of a side entrance with hundreds of people waiting for passing the security. They all fumbled with their ID cards, while we were getting nervous not having our passport swith us. To our big surprise we were handed an entry ticket without even taking notice of our missing ID. Also we seemed to be the only foreigners (waiguoren) here: What an honour! So we entered the exhibition hall full of exhibits glorifying the victorious Red Army. There was even a group of youngsters reciting spontaneously the Chinese oath of allegiance hanging on the wall. The roundtrip took us not more than half an hour, because we were unable to dig into details due to our lack of language skills. But it was an exhibition visit with big visual and emotional impact.
First at home when researching background material on the internet we realized that we happend to be in the middle of a great Chinese National event: The opening of the Memorial Exhibition of the 80th Anniversary of the Victory of the Long March. As a youth in the middle of the 1970ies we had a maoist geography teacher in Germany who wanted to teach us all about Red China. She gave me a MC with the „Long March Symphony“ a very dramatic piece which was about the first music which I associated with China. You can listen to it on Tudou.
Some impressions form the exhibition
