IN BEIJING

IT WAS surreal.

Beer-bellied men and flamboyantly dressed women feasted on huge piles of meat and buns - which could well have cost thousands of meal coupons four decades ago in communist China. They were served by young waitresses clad in Red Guard uniforms, while performers on stage triumphantly sang of Mao Zedong's victory over capitalist dogs.

When I arrived at the "Authentic Revolutionary Red-themed Restaurant" in Beijing - a good hour's drive from the city centre - I thought I would be stepping back in time, enjoying simple village food from Mao's hometown of Shaoshan in the southern Hunan province and watching re-enactments and readings from the Little Red Book of Mao's sayings performed by earnest socialist devotees.

Mini Mao busts and badge sold at Beijing's Panjiayuan flea market.
ST PHOTO: Lin Zhaowei

 
Mao's Little Red Book, related literature and a Mao-themed
backpack sold at Beijing's Panjiayuan flea market.
ST PHOTO: Lin Zhaowei

Instead, we entered what I'm tempted to describe as a socialist equivalent of Moulin Rouge - apart from the fact that the performers on stage were much more covered up than those in the audience.

We were ushered into a huge room with a two-floor-high ceiling, packed with at least 30 tables - each seating about 10 to 12 people - and festooned with decorations such as pictures of revolutionary soldiers and dispays of badges, busts and other Mao memorabilia. Need I even mention the colour theme of the restaurant?

Obviously, red.

At 7.30pm, an hour-long, over-the-top song and dance extravaganza began. About 15 performers dressed in revolution-era uniforms including the distinctive olive green suit with black belt, red armband and jaunty cap donned by masses of Red Guard students during the Cultural Revolution to spread Mao's teachings across the country. The songs were classic: "Red Sun", "The East is Red" - popular tunes delivered in Beijing operatic style by girls and lads far too young to recall the history of bloodshed and revolutionary fervour couched in those lyrics.

A dinner performance at the Mao-era themed Authentic
Revolutionary Red-themed Restaurant in Beijing.
ST PHOTO: Lin Zhaowei

The highlight of the performance was a dramatic Second World War-era skit and song where the bespectacled, roly-poly Japanese enemy and snarling, shifty-eyed warlord were defeated by the valiant Red Army.
Everyone waved their wine glasses and little red flags - distributed to all the customers so that they could participate fully in the nationalistic display - and cheered as if they themselves had been just been liberated from the opppression of capitalist excess and foreign domination.

I cheered too - in support of "Xiaohua", one of the waitresses I spoke to who went on stage to perform a dance number waving red flowers and pigtails.

"During lunch and dinner time, we take turns to serve the guests, and during the day, we practise several hours of dance so that we can perform at night," said the rosy-cheeked girl in her early 20s.

Asked if she knew much about the Cultural Revolution where bourgeouis or liberal elements were purged, she shook her head and said: "My parents never talk about it."

It appeared that the audience, mostly locals in their 40s and 50s, had few bad memories - if any - of those tumultous times when Mao's Great Leap Forward resulted in a famine where some 30 million people dying of hunger between 1958 and 1960.

Wu Cheng Jiang, a bric a brac seller at the Panjiayuan flea market in Beijing, holds up badges with pictures of Mao Zedong - some of the Mao memorabilia items that he sells.
ST PHOTO: Lin Zhaowei


Mao-themed watches and alarm clock sold at Beijing's Panjiayuan flea market.
ST PHOTO: Lin Zhaowei

Perhaps they were too busy enjoying the cuisine, featuring oily, salt-laden portions of root vegetables, braised pork and chilli. While the food was not exactly impressive to a Singaporean palate, it must have tasted good - the other guests, who were almost all locals apart from the odd foreign tourist group - ate with great gusto, but even their excellent appetites were insufficient to clear more than two-thirds of the huge portions.

To cap off the rousing performance, the audience were invited to join stand up and march along to the national anthem...and a Happy Birthday song (both Chinese and broken English versions) to a beaming middle-aged lady whose age was discreetly left unmentioned.

Before we left, we casually asked a waiter how good the business is. If his account is accurate, there is very good money from this restaurant, chalking up revenues of over 30,000 yuan a day. Cost margins are apparently low - labour, food and rental costs are perhaps 20 to 30 per cent at most, and the restaurant apparently has quite a large pool of repeat customers and tour groups.

The boss of "Authentic Revolutionary Red-themed Restaurant" is a successful entrepreneur indeed. Just goes to show that capitalising on the red legacy is the way forward in modern China.

Mao badges sold at Beijing's Panjiayuan flea market.
ST PHOTO: Lin Zhaowei


Mao commemorative stamps sold at Beijing's Panjiayuan flea market.
ST PHOTO: Lin Zhaowei

Read related articles in this week's Saturday Special Report here.