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Backgrounder: Mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen


 

  BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhuanet) -- The visiting delegation of the Kuomintang (KMT) Party of China, headed by KMT Chairman Lien Chan,is scheduled to visit the Mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen and several other places in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province, Wednesday.

  The mausoleum visit is considered the highlight of Wednesday's activities. Sun, called by Lien Chan as the founding father of the KMT, is also universally acknowledged as a great forerunner of China's Democratic Revolution that successfully ended feudality inChina.

  The Mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen, one of the featuring sites of unique historical interest in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province,is set on the southern slope of the Purple Hills, covering an areaof some 3,000 hectares.

  A bronze statue of Dr. Sun Yat-sen stands before the gate. Opposite the statue is a massive triple-arch gateway on which is aplaque inscribed with "Fraternity" in Dr. Sun's brush writing. A broad 400-meter-long walk leads to the main entrance of the mausoleum, from where a magnificent view of the building opens up.

  Sheltered on three sides by verdant mountain slopes, the mausoleum has 392 granite steps leading up to the memorial hall. These are in four flights with platforms between so as not to exhaust the climber.

  The memorial hall itself is built of off-white granite with two-tiered roofs of deep-blue tile. It is simple but elegant. Inside the hall is a white marble statue of Dr. Sun Yat-sen seated with an unfolded document on his knees as though pondering over an unfinished project. Excerpts from his works are engraved in the surrounding marble walls.

  At the rear of the memorial hall a vault enclosed by a balustrade contains another marble statue of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, thisone in lying posture. Buried beneath this statue are his remains. The Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum is outstanding for its architecture, thedesigning having been done by the engineer Zhuang Yongchang, who also designed the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Guangzhou.