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Embalmed Ho Chi Minh receives 22m visitors |
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July 27, 2000
HANOI (AP) - Nearly 22 million people, including 849,000 foreigners, have visited the mausoleum holding the embalmed body of Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh over the last 25 years, an official said Wednesday. The number of visitors has increased by an average of 20 percent per year over the past decade, said Nguyen Quang Tan, director of the Mausoleum Management Board. Tan attributed the surge to better communications as a result of the doi moi - renovation - economic reforms launched in the mid-1980s that have opened up the communist country. An average of 10,000 people visit the late president each day, Tan said, adding that more than 1 million people have gone to the mausoleum in the first six months of this year. The total for all of last year was 1.7 million people. Ho Chi Minh served as Vietnam's president from 1945, when he won independence from French colonialists, until his death in 1969. The mausoleum opened on Aug. 29, 1975, after two years of construction. It is common to see a long line of people, many coming by bus from other provinces, waiting to walk through the mausoleum, which is closed every October and November for maintenance. |