I was in Beijing this past summer and it’s weird seeing how blue the sky is and how few people there were in your pictures of the Forbidden City.
On Mar 12, 2005 6:13 PM, Robin said:
Reminds me of the time I visited Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow in 1999. I was 15 and had indeed never seen a corpse before.
Russia, despite expectations, was hot. Damn hot. We waited in line in shade-less Red Square for about half an hour before approaching the low, squat marble building. Rather than a sign, Lenin has immaculate, severe-faced soldiers outside telling people to, yep, take their hats off and keep quiet.
As much as anything else we were just glad to get out of the sun. We walked downstairs, turned a corner, and there he was. Lying in a glass case, a red cloth draped over the stumps of legs that were amputated when they started to rot. Similar to Mao, he was bright orange and looked like wax. I walked round him in silence and back upstairs into that hot Moscow sun.
It’s such a non-event really, it looks like you feel similarly. Whether it was or was not him is immaterial, I simply couldn’t reconcile Lenin the historical figure with the figure lying in a glass case a few feet away. I felt nothing, I wouldn’t suggest anyone else bother except for the fact it’s such a great story:
“hey, I ever tell you guys about the time I saw LENIN?”
2 Comments
I was in Beijing this past summer and it’s weird seeing how blue the sky is and how few people there were in your pictures of the Forbidden City.
Reminds me of the time I visited Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow in 1999. I was 15 and had indeed never seen a corpse before.
Russia, despite expectations, was hot. Damn hot. We waited in line in shade-less Red Square for about half an hour before approaching the low, squat marble building. Rather than a sign, Lenin has immaculate, severe-faced soldiers outside telling people to, yep, take their hats off and keep quiet.
As much as anything else we were just glad to get out of the sun. We walked downstairs, turned a corner, and there he was. Lying in a glass case, a red cloth draped over the stumps of legs that were amputated when they started to rot. Similar to Mao, he was bright orange and looked like wax. I walked round him in silence and back upstairs into that hot Moscow sun.
It’s such a non-event really, it looks like you feel similarly. Whether it was or was not him is immaterial, I simply couldn’t reconcile Lenin the historical figure with the figure lying in a glass case a few feet away. I felt nothing, I wouldn’t suggest anyone else bother except for the fact it’s such a great story:
“hey, I ever tell you guys about the time I saw LENIN?”