(Ecns.cn)--A five-story museum in a county in Weihai, Shandong Province, houses various Chairman Mao badges, with the smallest one being only 1 centimeter and the largest 1.08 meters in diameter.
"The badges on display are merely a part of my total collection from over three decades, which amounts to more than 1.5 million," said Yu Guojie proudly, head of the city's Books and Medals Association of Mao Zedong.
Yu, 49, an admirer of Mao, added: "I was running a shop in the 1980s. When people heard I was a cult collector of the Mao badges, they rushed to me to exchange goods with their badges. In a short time, I have accumulated almost all the badges of the local residents and those from neighboring counties."
In 2009, Liu Zaimeng, a pensioner from Zibo also donated his collection of over 10,000 badges to Yu. "I have met many kindhearted people like Liu," noted Yu. "They do not ask for returns. They merely hope to exhibit their collections in my museum."
The 30,000-square-meter museum, with an investment of hundreds of millions yuan, is still under decoration and will open to the public for free starting from May Day next year.
