Guo Fenglian, a middle-aged woman with short permed hair, stepped out of the Great Hall of the People and was instantly recognised by waiting reporters as the 'iron maiden' poster girl of the Cultural Revolution era.
'Secretary Guo, what do you think about Theory of Three Representatives?' asked one as he pushed a microphone in front of her face.
'It is an important guiding principle for the party to move forward,' she said. 'We must change with the times.'
A party member since she was 14 years old and a delegate to four party congresses, Ms Guo is the ideal person to trumpet President Jiang Zemin's theory, which calls for the party to embrace entrepreneurs and social elites, part of the Communist Party's efforts to reinvent itself.
Ms Guo, 56, has already re-invented herself from the symbol of China's ultra-leftist ideology to her position today as a chief executive in Shanxi province, where she runs 12 village factories manufacturing products ranging from liquor to cement and sweaters bearing the famous Dazhai name.
During the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s, both the village of Dazhai and Ms Guo, the village party secretary, were household names.
'In agriculture, learn from Dazhai,' was the slogan created by the late Mao Zedong in his frantic drive to boost production after he learned Ms Guo and others had managed to transform barren hills into terraced fields and achieved significant harvests.