Marxist pilgrims from China can't wait to get to the capitalist shops

By Kate Connolly in Trier
Filed: 08/12/2005

Thousands of Chinese tourists are exploiting their new freedom to make pilgrimages to the German birthplace of Karl Marx - and squeeze in some shopping as well.

This year more than 30,000 people from across China will have visited Trier, near the border with Luxembourg - an invasion jokingly attributed to the "Marx Factor".
The top priority for the travellers is to be snapped on their digital cameras in front of the baroque villa where the founding father of communism was born in 1818.

They buy plaster busts of Marx and Marx wine from the vineyard bought by his father, Heinrich, as an investment to support him in his old age. However, pralines imprinted with Marx's bearded face do not attract many buyers.

"They say they consider it too disrespectful to eat him," a museum guide said.

The Chinese, who have been allowed to travel to Germany freely only in the past two years, are now the second biggest group of visitors after the Dutch.

After a visit to the museum, most go shopping, spending an average of £135 a day on items such as non-stick saucepans, steel cutlery, chocolate, designer suits and Swiss army knives.

Trier, which is Germany's oldest city and was the capital of the western part of the Roman empire, has made great efforts to accommodate its new guests.

But Beatrix Bouvier, of the Friedrich Ebert foundation, which manages the museum, said: "There is widespread, albeit unspoken, frustration about the fact that they tend to bring their own food.

"Many of those from the countryside who are used to stand-up latrines have no idea how to use our lavatories. Some hotels have despaired of the results but they dare not turn away the custom."

The museum curators say the Chinese visitors are often taken aback by the warts-and-all portrayal of Marx. Last week a group of Beijing aerospace engineers giggled on being told that he had a mistress and an illegitimate child called Freddy.

"I did not know that," said Liu Liyong, 33. "But it makes him seem more human and fallible and I like that. Like the fact that he was born in this posh house, despite being a representative of the poor worker."

Sun Ting Ting, a tour guide, was saddened to learn from one display that two of Marx's daughters committed suicide.

"To think they were disillusioned because their father's dreams did not work out the way they had hoped," she mused. "And he really wasn't liked in his homeland, was he? But then neither was Jesus."

Outside the museum Miss Ting Ting waited impatiently for her group of visitors. "If you don't hurry, the shops will be closed," she said. She added: "I think Marx might have found it difficult to understand this but shopping is our new hobby."

kate.connolly@telegraph.co.uk