Wang ordered local officials to restore Yu’s grave and former residence as early as possible when he paid a visit to the site.

“If [the] Luliang [government] had focused on this work a few years earlier, there might not have been so many officials and cadres detained and locked in prisons,” Wang was quoted as saying by Guangzhou-based .

Wang reportedly mobilised local villagers to dig around the long-neglected tomb, which was hidden beneath a crop field.

“We must not leave the graveyard of the number one upstanding official to destruction and desolation,” Wang said. “Otherwise we should be ashamed for being the home to the most upstanding official.”

The move to restore the grave echoes President Xi Jinping’s call last year for party cadres to “draw from historical lessons on combating corruption” to build a clean government.

In an apparent response to the call, the nation’s corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party, this May dug out a decade-old television drama that portrays Yu’s great deeds and endorsed it on its official website.

Wang was parachuted into the Shanxi political scene after a career spent in the northern province of Jilin. The former Jilin party chief was named the successor to Yuan Chunqing in August amid a major reshuffle of the provincial party committee.

Yuan has been sidelined and assigned a new job as deputy head of the party’s Central Rural Work Leading Group, which crafts policies on agriculture and other rural affairs.

Under Yuan’s leadership, Shanxi has been mired in sweeping corruption investigation that has ensnared seven top provincial officials and several coal tycoons. Among those detained was Ling Zhengce, the brother of Ling Jihua, who was a top aide to former president Hu Jintao.