Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
all but disappeared by approximately 2030. A few telling descriptions
of it do survive, however, including a harrowing account by an old
woman who lived in Anhui province near Fengyang along the Huai
River at the time:
The communal canteen did not serve any proper food, just wild grasses,
peanut shells and sweet potato skins. Because of this diet we had ter-
rible problems. Some were constipated but others had constant diar-
rhoea and could not get beyond the front door. Yet if they found that a
house or the area around it was dirty, they would place a black flag out-
side. If it was clean, they put up a white flag. I had to try and clean up
the mess but at the time I had difficulty walking.
My legs and hands were swollen and I felt that at any moment
I would die. Instead of walking to the fields to look for wild grass,
I crawled and rolled to save energy. Several old women tried to get grass
from ponds or rivers but because they had to stand in the water their
legs became infected.
All the trees in the village had been cut down. Any nearby were all
strippedofbark.Ipeeledoffthebarkofalocusttreeandcookeditas
if it were rice soup. It tasted like wood and was sticky.
At the time the villagers looked quite fat and even healthy because
they were swollen but when they were queuing up at the canteen to
eat, they would suddenly collapse and could not get up. Some could
only walk using a stick
...
More than half of the villagers died, mostly between New Year [1960]
and April or May. In one of our neighbours' houses, three boys and a
girl starved. In one brother's family two children died. Another family
of sixteen died. Many families disappeared completely with no survi-
vors at all. The production team chief's daughter-in-law and his grand-
son starved to death. He then boiled and ate the corpse of the child but
he also died. When the village teacher was on the verge of death, he said
to his wife, “Why should we keep our child? If we eat him then I can
survive and later we can produce another child.” His wife refused to
do this and her husband died. (Becker 1996, 135-36)
Bao Ruo-wang (Jean Pasqualini), a Chinese and French citizen, was
imprisoned in late 1957 on charges in the course of the anti-rightist
campaign, and his prison memoirs recall the widespread eating of
“food substitutes” in China at the time in vain attempts to stave off
hunger pangs and give a sense of satisfied fullness in the stomachs of
starving people:
The signal that truly desperate times were upon us came in early
December, when a horse-drawn cart entered the compound and a
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