MAO Zhiming and his wife are a thoroughly modern peasant couple. She is in the refrigerator business while he runs a small joint venture workshop packaging Mao 100th anniversary watches.
They live in a newly-completed two-storey villa surrounded by picturesque hills and farmland and have two charming daughters, both of whom plan to go to college when they graduate from high school.
The family still grows rice and vegetables on their small plot of land, but often hire labourers from poorer neighbouring villages to bring in the harvest.
It is a scene their distant ancestor and the founder of the People's Republic, Mao, would probably have difficulty recognising were he alive today, and it is doubtful if he would approve of the overtly capitalist lifestyle his descendants were leading.
When the Great Helmsman last visited his home town in 1966, Shaoshan was still a poor, isolated hamlet, part of a vast commune where any form of private enterprise was strictly forbidden. Even keeping chickens in the backyard was a serious offence.
Peasants had no property rights and could not even cook at home, having to eat in huge communal canteens where the food was mediocre, to say the least.