Posted on 08/11/2003 7:45:57 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
A Russian-made jet once used by Jiang Qing, leader of the Gang of Four and disgraced wife of the late Chairman Mao Zedong, has been sold to a doctor who plans to turn it into a restaurant, a newspaper said Monday.
The doctor, identified only by his surname Zheng, bought the aging Ilyushin Il-62 from the Shandong-based Haide Group for two million yuan ($241,600), the Wenzhou City News said.
The aircraft had the words Jiang Qing painted in red on the side, though most of the interior had been removed, it said.
The jet is sitting by the water at the coastal city of Rui'an in eastern Zhejiang province, not far from Wenzhou, having been sent by ship from Shandong province in the north.
Neither the doctor nor the Haide Group were immediately available for comment.
The report quoted an engineer who had worked on the aircraft as saying Li Haide, chairman of the Haide Group, bought the aircraft at an auction in Beijing in 1992. Li told the engineer the jet had once been used by Jiang Qing.
Jiang Qing, Mao's third wife, was nicknamed the "white-boned demon" and led the Gang of Four, which was accused of fanning the flames of the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.
She was sentenced in 1981 to death for counter-revolutionary crimes, a verdict later commuted to life in prison. Ten years later she committed suicide while on medical parole.
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