Thousands of people were already queuing at 8 a.m., half-an-hour early. Marshals in business suits with red ID badges and megaphones formed us into two lines in the chilly sunshine. Then, at a brisk pace, we walked round the ornamental gardens, past the stall selling bouquets of artificial flowers and up the 34 granite steps into the hallowed place. After being closed to the public for nine months, Chairman Mao's mausoleum in Beijing's Tiananmen Square was back in business.
When it shut in April last year, by which time over a million people had walked past the 20-year-old crystal sarcophagus, there was much speculation that the Memorial tomb would stay that way.
Time was taking its toll on the body of Mao Zedong, who died in 1976, and it was perhaps the right moment to make a symbolic break with China's troubled revolutionary past. After all Mao himself had asked to be cremated, and his eventual successor Deng Xiaoping, who hated the monolithic Sovietera tomb which blocked the qi, or spirit, radiating from the nearby Forbidden City to the heart of China, had overthrown Mao's legacy by embracing capitalist ways.
But yesterday the Great Helmsman was put on display again and a digital counter over the door began to record the next million to pass through its portals. I was number 982, I think. It was clicking up pretty fast, confirming the hall's reputation as one of Beijing's most popular tourist attractions.
In the warm sweet air inside, the queue divided to the right and left of a dimly-lit chamber. Unlike Lenin's tomb in Red Square, which was surprisingly intimate, Mao's transparent coffin is separated from the public by high glass walls. The Chairman lies of a slab of stone from sacred Mount Tai which is said to be brought up each morning on a special elevator from a refrigerated chamber. A red flag with hammer and sickle covers the body and a light illuminates his face like a waxen moon.
"He's changed," said a middle-aged Beijing woman who was visiting the mausoleum for the fourth time in her life. "His ears look dark and his face is thinner. And his skin doesn't look natural."
Many visitors had been bussed to the mausoleum by their work units. They hadn't known they were coming to see Mao when they got up to go to work. But there were many more who came as individuals to honour the founder of the People's Republic, who still has a special place in the hearts of millions of Chinese people, despite a 27-year-rule marred by famine, political purges and the excesses of the 10-year Cultural Revolution.
"He made mistakes," said one woman, "but he is high in our hearts."
An old, erect, party cadre from Shanxi Province said he believed the famine was an act of nature, and that Mao's only mistake was the Cultural Revolution. He himself had been beaten up by Mao's Red Guards as a suspected capitalist roader.
Capitalist roaders flourish everywhere in China these days, and the exit yard behind the Hall was packed with money-spinning souvenir stalls - many more than when it closed. Memorial Hall work unit staff were busy selling Mao watches, clocks, chopsticks, tie-pins, dishes, busts, pictures, statues, Great Man screens and "Chairman Mao Memorial Hall" filter cigarettes (one pound for a carton of 100), as well as ski caps, ginseng, zodiac jewellery and Mickey Mouse school-bags.
There was even a clothes store selling men's wear - but not Mao suits.
"We don't stock them," said the shop assistant, puzzled that I should even inquire about the high-collared boiler suits which Chinese men wore in the Mao era and which have almost disappeared from the streets. There was no ceremony for the re-opening, suggesting that the embalmed corpse is being displayed again as much as a tourist attraction as an icon of communism.
Leaving the square I asked a taxi driver if she would visit the mausoleum, now that it was back in business. "No chance," she replied. "I'm too busy trying to make money."