Palace of Corruption Draws Masses

The mansion was the mysterious house of sin built by China’s most-wanted criminal. The red pleasure palace--the color of the Communist Party--had played host to hundreds of straying party officials.

As part of a high-profile fight against crime, the authorities opened it to the public recently as an anti-corruption shrine. But the cautionary “educational facility” has quickly become a tourist hot spot.

Thousands of visitors are lining up for a peek at the adult playground where Lai Changxing allegedly intoxicated party bosses with women and cash, luring them into a smuggling operation that was the worst in 52 years of Communist rule.

As if proving a point about corruption, only those with back-door connections seem to get in.

“This is not fair,” said one man who had waited three days in the rain, only to find out that the tour was sold out yet again. “They advertise it all over the papers and TV, so why won’t they let us see it?”

Museum officials explain that the exhibit is meant to be limited to 1,000 visitors a day and that its purpose is to educate, not entertain. About 700 tickets are reserved for government work units bringing party cadres in by the busload. In a public relations gambit, hundreds more are set aside for potential investors put off by this southern port city’s smuggling scandal.

Staff members say that even though they have turned many people away, they also have had to stretch the daily capacity to about 2,500.

Connections Still Can Get You In

Savvy travel agencies have been quick to cash in on the buzz, offering tour packages featuring a stop at the red mansion. Scalpers, too, are making profits on the 60-cent ticket under the nose of uniformed guards.

“I had no idea Lai Changxing could run away and leave behind such a money tree,” said an out-of-town visitor who was still standing in line even though tickets had been sold out that morning by about 9. He eventually got in because another man in line used his bosses’ connection to talk the box office into issuing more tickets.

With rampant corruption threatening the political and economic future of the Communist Party, Beijing has eagerly resorted to extreme measures, such as a record number of death sentences, to crack down on offending officials and set a public example. But in today’s China, it is difficult for the state to control what, if anything, the public will learn from a propaganda campaign.

Already, critics are warning that turning a den of vice into a commercial enterprise is no way to educate anyone. But many in the public insist that the tour is a learning opportunity.

“I wanted to see how our officials could be so easily corrupted,” said Chen Zhaofang, a 70-year-old retired cadre from Xiamen who ran a local bank in the 1950s. “In our time, nobody dared. The country we built is being destroyed by these bad seeds.”

Younger visitors, however, confess that mostly they are curious to see just how luxurious a $17-million mansion could be. Some of them walked through the darkly lighted, red-carpeted rooms as if they were apartment hunting, carefully checking out the choice of gaudy upholstery and the imported appliances, commenting on the fixtures’ desirability.

They shuffled past the karaoke rooms, the massage parlors, the twin hot tubs, sauna and private screening room. They paused longer at the presidential suite, where the bedroom mirror doubles as a secret door.

They were particularly curious about Lai’s garage, where he offered free car repair services to officials and their sweethearts. They gawked at Lai’s favorite black bulletproof Mercedes-Benz. Supposedly, it had been used to chauffeur Chinese President Jiang Zemin during the 1997 ceremony of Hong Kong’s hand-over from British to Chinese rule. Lai snatched it up at an auction for about $1.5 million.

Even more fascinating to some than the decadent red-brick building with blue-tinted windows is the nondescript white structure across the lot. Neighbors in this residential area knew it as Lai’s electronics factory. But visitors to the exhibit learned that not a single piece of equipment was produced there. Instead, the white building’s only function was to house a huge boxing ring where Lai’s entourage of bodyguards hit punching bags and knocked each other around.

Pleasure Den’s Allure Remains Elusive

For a lot of visitors, anticlimax was inevitable. Everything on display was mere hardware, which many said was not much better than the amenities at the five-star hotels now popular in large Chinese cities.

“Most of it was not so special,” said Chen, the retired cadre. “Only the safe deposit box was impressive. It was the size of a sofa.”

There was no sign of the things that made the red house notorious: the women and the cash that flowed in and out like water. Lai allegedly used them to blackmail and bribe officials who helped him cheat the government out of an estimated $3.6 billion in import duties.

“It was very difficult for the people in power to resist his sugarcoated bullets,” said Pu Xingzu, a political science professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University. “Unfortunately, he was not the first to do this, and he won’t be the last.”

Although many of his cronies have either been executed or are serving long sentences, Lai managed to slip away to Canada. He is fighting extradition to China, where he would certainly face capital punishment.

Despite the government’s best efforts to paint Lai as a vile crook, some people in his hometown still betray a hint of admiration each time they speak of the uneducated farmer who achieved “Godfather” status, indirectly enriching the local economy at the expense of the national government.

“He’s a smart man, not an evil man,” said a newspaper vendor who declined to give his name. “He didn’t kill anyone. He just evaded taxes.”