Soldiers rehearsing for Deng Xiaoping's cremation practiced carrying a glass bier with an officer inside Saturday, and police tightened security to prevent demonstrations of grief from spiraling into political protests.
Workers unloaded truckloads of flowers at the Great Hall of the People, the cavernous legislative chambers adjacent to Tiananmen Square where Deng's memorial will be held Tuesday.Extra patrols of police on bicycles circled Beijing's main streets and stood at intersections. Plainclothes police confiscated flowers from people headed toward a memorial for revolutionary martyrs in the center of Tiananmen Square, where flags flew at half-staff.
In the politically volatile Chinese capital, authorities have tried to confine public reaction to Deng's death Wednesday at age 92 to the eulogies poured out by the state-run news media.
Subdued displays of sorrow took place elsewhere in the country.
In Shenzhen, the southern boomtown near Hong Kong that Deng's reforms created, hundreds of people laid yellow flowers for the third day in a row beneath a billboard bearing his likeness. Police watched the mourners closely, telling them to move on after leaving bouquets of chrysanthemums to mourn Deng's death.
More than 10,000 mourners descended on Deng's birthplace, isolated Paifang village in the hills of southwestern Sichuan province. The mourners swamped the village of 2,000 people, said Huang Heping of the regional television station.
"They took flowers and cried and bowed," said Fu Qiang, another television journalist.
State-run television showed students, intellectuals, farmers and others throughout the nation gathering before portraits of Deng, bowing and weeping. Bookstores did a thriving business in Deng posters and recordings of his speeches.