KMT leader visits Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen (newsphoto) Updated: 2005-04-27 11:06
KMT leader Lien Chan pays respect
to party founder Dr. Sun Yat-sen during a visit to the mausoleum
of the party founder in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province April
27, 2005.
[newsphoto]
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The visiting
Kuomingtang (KMT) delegation headed by KMT Chairman Lien Chan arrived at the
imposing Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) at around 8:50 a.m. on
Wednesday in east China's Nanjing city.
It is the first time that the top
leader of the party paid tribute to the Mausoleum of the KMT founder since the
party lost acivil war and fled to the island province of Taiwan in 1949.
Lien was accompanied to the Mausoleum by his
60-member entourage.
On March 12, 1925, the revolutionary forerunner
died of illness in Beijing and, in 1929, the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum was built in
Nanjing at his behest. A grandiose ceremony was held to place his remains in the
mausoleum. Since 1949, the Communist Party of China(CPC)-led Chinese government
has paid top priority to the protection and maintenance of the mausoleum.
Now capital of the coastal province of Jiangsu,
Nanjing was once China's national capital when the country was under the rule of
the KMT from the 1920s to 1940s.
On Wednesday afternoon, the delegation was
scheduled to visit the former presidential office during the KMT rule of China
and the Confucius Temple, built in 1034 to consecrate and worship the ancient
Chinese thinker and educator Confucius.
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