Hyped pilgrimages to Xi Jinping’s cave home doing more harm than good, says his roommate
Caution over tourism at the village of Liangjiahe, where the Chinese president spent his late teens as a youth sent to the country under Mao Zedong initiative
A former roommate of Xi Jinping from the days when the president was an adolescent toiling in an impoverished village in northwest China has said hype over their former cave home is doing the Chinese leader no good.
The comments of Lei Pingsheng, who shared cave dormitories with Xi for six years while the chaos of the Cultural Revolution engulfed China, come at a time when the backwater village of Liangjiahe in Shaanxi province has shot to fame as one of China’s must-see places since Xi took over as leader in 2012.
Lei was sent to Liangjiahe along with Xi in 1969 as “sent down youths”, under Mao Zedong’s campaign to send privileged urban youths to work in the countryside to get rid of their pro-bourgeois thinking.
Tours from across the country – under the pretext of learning from the president’s formative years – have flocked to Liangjiahe, and its growing popularity, despite no evidence that Xi or the leadership is encouraging it, has prompted some to express concern about building a personality cult around Xi.
Lei, a 68-year-old retired pharmaceutical scientist, said the hype had become too great and cooling it down was the right thing for the president.