Yok Mu-ming, chairman of the New Party in Taiwan, presents a wreath to the Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province July 8, 2005.

The visiting delegation of the New Party in Taiwan, led by Chairman Yok Mu-ming, visited the Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province, early on Friday.

Yok and his entourage reached the mausoleum at 8:15 a.m.. On behalf of the delegation members, Yok laid a floral wreath before the sedentary statue of Sun Yat-sen, the forerunner of the Chinese democratic revolution that ended feudal rule in China in the 1911 Revolution.

The New Party delegation also followed the traditional Chinese way of paying tribute to the deceased by making three bows toward the seated statue of Sun, and then visited the chamber where the coffin of Sun is placed.

Before his departure from the mausoleum, Yok wrote an inscription and gave a brief speech calling for more efforts to be made till the Chinese mainland and Taiwan are reunified.

The Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, one of the featuring sites of unique historical interest in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, is set on the southern slope of the Purple Hills, covering an area of some 3,000 hectares.

A bronze statue of Dr. Sun Yat-sen stands before the gate. Opposite the statue is a massive triple-arch gateway on which is a plaque inscribed with "Fraternity" in Dr. Sun's brush writing. A broad 400-meter-long walk leads to the main entrance of the mausoleum, from where a magnificent view of the building opens up.

Sheltered on three sides by verdant mountain slopes, the mausoleum has 392 granite steps leading up to the memorial hall. These are in four flights with platforms between so as not to exhaust the climber.

The memorial hall itself is built of white granite with two-tiered roofs of deep-blue tile. It is simple but elegant. Inside the hall is a white marble statue of Dr. Sun Yat-sen seated with an unfolded document on his knees as though pondering over an unfinished project. Excerpts from his works are engraved in the surrounding marble walls.

At the rear of the memorial hall a vault enclosed by a balustrade contains another marble statue of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, this one in lying posture. Buried beneath this statue are his remains.

The Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum is outstanding for its architecture, the designing having been done by the engineer Zhuang Yongchang, who also designed the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Guangzhou.

Source: Xinhua