Chairman Mao hall to undergo 6-month renovation

The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, China. [Photo: Chinanews.com]

The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in Beijing's Tiananmen Square will be closed for six months for renovation starting March, which will include repairs to the building and its inner facilities.

The memorial hall administration said on Friday that the overhaul will be conducted from March 1 to August 31, and will be temporarily closed to visitors for security reasons.

The hall was built in May 1977 and opened to the public on September 9 that year.

Some 220 million people have viewed the embalmed body of the late chairman at the hall. During peak holiday seasons, up to 30,000 people at a time file past the leader's body, Guangming Daily reported.

The memorial hall undergoes renovations every March, including work to its air conditioners and lights, Zhengzhiju, a social media account run by the Beijing Youth Daily, reported.

Aside from the annual renovations which normally take 20 days, the hall is overhauled every 10 years, the report said. 

The last overhaul occurred in 2007 and lasted nearly seven months, from March to September 2007, when the building and its equipment were in need of repair. 

The 1997 overhaul lasted nine months from April to December.

The next overhaul will be undertaken by state-owned China Xinxing Construction and Development General, the report said.

The company released a notice on February 20 saying it had won the bid to renovate the hall.

The hall honors Chairman Mao and six other national leaders, including Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and Deng Xiaoping.  

The hall was one of the most popular tourist spots in September 9, 2016, which marked the 40th anniversary of Mao's death, the founding father of the People's Republic of China.