After Mao's Death

This account came from The White-Haired Girl, Bittersweet Adventures of a Little Red Soldier by Jaia Sun-Childers and Douglas Childers.

Apparently, there was "shock" that after Mao Zedong's (毛泽东) death, Beijng announced that the Chairman's body "would be preserved and set in a crystal coffin in a mausoleum to be built in Tiananmen Square."

Why "shock?"

Because since China was "liberated" in 1949, "the Party had called preservations and burial customs barbaric and feudal, and made cremation compulsory by law."

But then we all know that some people are more equal than others.