An old icon is getting a makeover. The 7 meter tall statue of Mao Zedong that has stood in the village of Changsha in Hunan Province since the Cultural Revolution is soon to be plated in 24 carat gold. Hunan is a center of mining and metallurgy with a growing economic base, so perhaps this is a natural choice. Had it instead been a center for confectionery, they could have dipped him in chocolate.
The spot market for gold shows it trading above 628 USD per ounce today, and if one of my astute readers would like to work out the cost in gold of gilding a statue 4 times the height of the average Chinese person I'd be very grateful to learn the results of your calculations.
Meanwhile, I bet all those hasty reformers in the Russian Federation who dragged their discarded statues of Lenin off to the scrapyard are eating their hearts now over the missed opportunity to have their own gold-plated icons. Maybe they can bronze Khrushchev's shoe.
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