"Eternal glory to the people's heroes!" So reads the inscription, in Mao Zedong's handwriting on the front of this revolutionary-themed obilisk.

Carved of the finest Qingdao granite and marble, and pointing almost 40 meters skyward, it's a short walk north of Mao's Mausoleum. Completed in 1958, it weighs more than 10,000 metric tons.

The heroes to whom it is dedicated are those who fought for the people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries or, in the words of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, in an inscription on the back of the monument: "who from 1840 laid down their lives in the many struggles against domestic and foreign enemies and for national independence and the freedom and well-being of the people!" 

The white marble bas-relieves around the base depict various revolutionary episodes throughout that period, from the First Opium War, through the May 4th Movement, to the founding of the People's Republic.