Chinese content to re-live Mao era — over a meal

GUANGZHOU, China, (Reuters) - At the door of the Commune Mess Hall restaurant, a young woman in loose-fitting army fatigues and a cap, with a red "Serve the People" armband and braided pigtails, greets customers. "Welcome, Comrade! How many?" she chirps.

A Chinese paramilitary police officer stands guard in front of a portrait of the late communist leader Mao Zedong on display at the Tiananmen Gate in Beijing

Huge portraits of Engels, Marx, Mao, Lenin and Stalin adorn a back wall and Chinese propaganda posters hang on pillars and side walls, showing chipper workers, peasants and soldiers toiling.

Blocky, red characters painted on the rafters implore: "Be self-reliant, work arduously" and "Use your own two hands to have ample food and clothing".

The eatery here in the capital of the booming southern province of Guangdong is a throwback to the Mao era, modelled on the communes that dotted the countryside from the 1950s to 70s.
Staff dressed like the Red Guards of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution serve peasant fare. Revolutionary songs play in the background.

Scores of similar restaurants have opened around the country, recalling a turbulent period in China's modern history that many remember with bitterness but which also evokes feelings of nostalgia for what some say was a simpler time.

They are perhaps the Chinese equivalent of America's milkshake and hamburger drive-ins with Motown classics on the jukebox. The eateries test the boundaries of political correctness in a fast-changing country still ruled by the Communist Party, which is holding its 17th Congress in Beijing this week to map out policy for the next five years and name a leadership team.

Five decades ago, Mao launched the first communes -- which, of course, featured communal kitchens -- with the Great Leap Forward, an effort to spur the economy that instead caused a famine that killed as many as 30 million people.