Follow the leader

STANDING IN FRONT of a four-metre-tall statue of Deng Xiaoping, tour guide Liu Dingming snaps sharply to attention. 'Deng was a great leader,' she says, as dozens of visitors hold plastic flowers and crowd for photographs in front of the monument. 'His thought was beautiful.' Her words echo common themes - a curious combination of history, propaganda and amusement - at the new 55-hectare Deng Xiaoping Memorial Park in Sichuan province's Guangan city, the birthplace of the former Chinese leader.

That level of goodwill towards Deng is common among educated and successful Chinese (the beneficiaries of Deng's policies), and the park is a kind of propaganda as the government works to link itself to Deng's legacy. The Guangan government - supported by provincial and national funds - opened the museum to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Deng's birth in August, when officials across the country staged a series of activities.

In Beijing, the China Philharmonic Orchestra held a concert featuring Richard Strauss' A Hero's Life. The postal service issued commemorative stamps. Publishing houses and movie studios released dozens of patriotic books and films chronicling Deng's rise. In Shenzhen, authorities organised a concert by 200 pianists.

But Guangan outdid them all. The memorial park is just part of an effort to build the city into a tourist Mecca on par with Mao Zedong's birthplace in Hunan province. According to local press reports, the city of 200,000 people invested US$725 million to build parks and museums dedicated to the former leader, including a new four-storey library featuring an exhibit of Deng photos and a revamped central square where a nightly Deng tribute show includes a movie projected on a screen of falling water. Scores of billboards around the city bear inspirational Deng quotes. 'Realise the people's dreams,' one reads. 'Meet the people's needs.'

The fanfare and the ensuing commercial ventures provide the city with a carnival atmosphere. At the Square of Deng Xiaoping's Bronze Statue, visitors pay 50 yuan for bouquets of flowers to place beside a larger-than-life sculpture of Deng sitting in a wicker chair. Outside the park, there are dozens of souvenir shops.

At the Deng Xiaoping 100 Year Anniversary Souvenir Shop, 30-year-old owner She Du sells crystal cubes etched with Deng's profile for US$12 a piece, while bottles of Deng Family Rice Liquor - made according to Deng's grandfather's recipe - sell for US$3. The best-selling item, she says, are 30cm stone busts of Deng.

The lawns and ponds of the park are built on land formerly owned by the Deng family. Deng's ancestral home, where he was born in 1904, is preserved as a simple but spacious building of whitewashed earth walls and heavy wooden beams. Plaques inside the building's nearly empty rooms explain what they were used for when Deng was growing up: a weaving room, his sister's bedroom, a tool room.