Great Hall of the People

This guide to the Great Hall of the People traces a promise Mao Zedong made in a cave in Yan'an in the early 1940s, that a revolution's government would one day fill a hall built for ten thousand people. You'll hear how, seventeen years later in 1958, that promise came due against the deadline of the tenth anniversary of the People's Republic, and how nearly eight thousand workers raised the building in ten months. It follows the design disputes, including a demand from Beijing's mayor that nearly stalled construction after the concrete was already poured.