Chairman Mao Zedong Memorial Hall reopens after renovation

Chairman Mao Zedong Memorial Hall, located at the Tian'anmen Square in central Beijing, has reopened to the public on Sept 1 after undergoing renovation for more than six months.

The renovation of the 40,744-square-meter hall took 184 days and finished on Aug 31, according to China Xinxing Construction & Development General Co, which won the bidding for the project.

The work included the electromechanical devices, some of the guards' rooms and the reception hall in the five-story building, two of which lie underground, according to the renovator.

On Friday morning, one day ahead of the 41st anniversary of Mao's death, the number of visitors waiting in line at the gate was about 300. Because visitors are required to keep walking in a line and cannot stop in the hall, the line moves pretty fast and visitors needed to wait for about 10 minutes before entering the hall.

This was the third large-scale renovation of the hall in the past two decades, but the shortest one. The work in 1997 took nine months while the one in 2007 took seven. The hall, which opened to the public on Sept 9, 1977, has received more than 200 million visitors from home and abroad, according to Chinese media reports.