Nearly 200,000 visits to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum were made by tourists from home and abroad in the first three days of the Chinese Lunar New Year starting Feb. 8, said the mausoleum sources on Thursday.

Completed in 1929 in east China's Nanjing City, capital of Jiangsu Province, the mausoleum is in honor of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Kuomintang Party and a forerunner of China's anti-feudalism revolution.

"I'm here because I'm interested in modern and contemporary Chinese history," said a Brazilian tourist Lucas, "but I didn't expect to see so many people."

This year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference last year decided that a commemoration will be held on Nov. 12 this year.

"I'm glad to be here after visiting the Sun Yat-sen memorial hall in Taiwan," said a Taiwan businessman who visited the mausoleum, "I'm looking forward to the commemorations on both sides of the Taiwan Strait."

Dr. Sun was born in 1866 and died in 1925. He is known to the Chinese as a "great revolutionary and statesman" for his leading role during the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew the imperial Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and put an end to more than 2,000 years of feudal rule. Endit

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