Introduction
My mother was born in 1947 in Wulongji, Xi County, Xinyang Prefecture, Henan Province (later, due to administrative divisions adjustments, it was changed to Gucheng Township, Huaibin County in the early 1950s) in Caizhuang Village, Laozhuang Brigade. In her childhood, an unprecedented catastrophe cast a heavy shadow over her blossoming life. Although she eventually survived, she lost her parents and all her siblings. This tragic catastrophe, which occurred nearly half a century ago, is very painful. The relevant historical events have not been seriously researched, recorded, summarized, and reflected upon, so that we, as descendants of the survivors of the Great Famine, are somewhat vague about that period of history. For a country that excels in historical records in the history of world civilization, this kind of historical oblivion and negligence is completely unacceptable, both morally and from the practical perspective of taking history as a mirror. I am personally very willing to do my best to discover and record that heartbreaking period of history. As part of this effort, this summer, I intermittently had several conversations with my mother about her personal experiences during the Great Famine, and the following is a brief record of these conversations.
[I would like to clarify that, when organizing the conversations, I have corrected my mother’s overly colloquial expressions so that all Chinese readers can fully understand the meaning of the dialogues. However, I have retained those more easily understood colloquial expressions to reflect the conversational characteristics of this record. In addition, the dates in the text generally refer to the lunar calendar, as this is their habit of reckoning years.]
Dialogue Record
Son: How many people were in our family [referring to my mother’s family] before the Great Leap Forward?
Mother: In 1958, there were six people in the family: your grandfather, grandmother, two aunts, and one uncle. I was the oldest among the four children, and your uncle was the youngest. At that time, your great-grandmother (referring to my mother’s grandmother) lived alone.
Son: What was the family’s living condition before the Great Leap Forward?
Mother: Before 1958, our family cultivated the land allocated to us, and each family’s land was basically the same. Mainly because the family members were relatively diligent, our family’s living standard was considered upper-middle in the local area. At that time, we ate mostly fine grains, sometimes coarse grains, but there was no problem with food and clothing. After 1958, we mainly ate coarse grains.
Son: Why did they want to establish the Great Collective at that time? Weren’t people still doing okay?
Mother: It was all the result of mobilization. At that time, joining the collective was like investing. In 1958, there were also propaganda parades. At first, ordinary people didn’t want to hand over their food, and most people hid their grain. The village cadres held meetings to mobilize, saying how wonderful the brigade and the Great Collective were, and then ordinary people handed over their grain.
Son: What changes were there after joining the Great Collective?
Mother: After the Great Leap Forward, the commune members all worked collectively and started eating in the public canteen. The meals were distributed based on labor, and each family didn’t need to cook, nor could they cook, because all the grain in the family had to be handed over. In 1958, the village still had grain, and there was food to eat, and we could eat our fill, but it wasn’t as good as what we ate at home, and most of what we ate was coarse grains.
Son: After the living standards declined, did the commune members have any opinions? Did the village cadres not reflect the situation?
Mother: There were opinions, but no one dared to raise them, mainly because of the effect of the anti-rightist campaign after the Great Blooming and Contending. At that time, there was a person named Jian Jinfu who wrote a limerick to express his dissatisfaction with the situation at the time. The first two lines of the limerick were: “Eating pig bran, using the strength of an ox.” I can’t remember the rest. Later, Jian Jinfu was criticized in the village. After this incident, the commune members were less likely to raise opinions. Also, the commune members could still eat their fill at that time, so they endured it, and no one raised any opinions.
The village cadres also knew that the situation was not as good as before, but they emphasized that this was the policy and must be implemented, so no cadres raised any opinions to the higher authorities.
Son: What happened in 1959? How did the situation suddenly become so bad?
Mother: In 1959, the exaggeration was even more serious. When the higher authorities inspected the granaries, the cadres below did something, and the granaries were filled with all sorts of other things, with only a layer of grain on top. Most of the commune members knew about the exaggeration, but no one dared to report it, and their awareness was also relatively low.
In the second half of 1959, there was a drought and little rain, and the yield was reduced by half, and some of the rice died, but there was still some harvest. Sweet potatoes and beans were somewhat affected, but basically not much. Wheat was harvested in the first half of the year and was not affected by natural disasters. We could still eat our fill in the first half of 1959. In the second half of 1959, the canteen ran out of grain, and we basically ate only wild vegetables, and only a little bean flour (note: refers to flour made from soybeans) was added to the wild vegetable soup. Sometimes we ate sweet potatoes and sweet potato soup, but we never ate fine grains again.
At the end of 1959 and the beginning of 1960, for two or three months, the public canteen only opened once every few days (three, four, or seven, eight days), because there was very little to eat, and the main things to eat were wild vegetables and wild grass. People generally suffered from edema and had sallow complexions.
At that time, going to the canteen to get food was done by family, and the children (or even adults) in charge of getting food at home had already eaten the thick stuff in the basin on the way back, and when they got home, there was only soup left in the basin. The other family members had to go without food. People who were hungry only knew how to look after themselves.
Also, some families concealed the deaths of their family members, because if they concealed it, the deceased person still had a quota when getting food, and they could get more food. When your younger aunt starved to death, they concealed it for several days, and she just lay at home.
Son: How did your grandfather, grandmother, aunts, and uncle die at that time?
Mother: The youngest aunt (six years old) and uncle (three years old) died one after another in the autumn of 1959; they starved to death directly. Your second aunt was sent to your second uncle’s (my mother’s second uncle, who was the director of a cadre school in Xinyang City at the time) home in 1960, because she was sick from hunger and her body was weak, and she also died in Xinyang after two or three months.
Your grandfather passed away in the winter of 1959. It was because he couldn’t bear the torment, and he died on the way when he went to your second uncle’s place to seek refuge. At that time, the village cadres wanted foreign money, and I don’t know why they wanted foreign money. Almost all families with better conditions were forced to hand over foreign money. If they said they didn’t have any, they would be beaten and kicked by the village cadres. After your grandfather was beaten, he handed over some, and the village cadres said there was still some, so they continued to whip him and even hanged him up and beat him. At that time, your grandfather couldn’t bear the beating, so he went to Xinyang to find your second uncle, wanting to hide and find something to eat. Due to his weak body, he fell ill when he arrived in Luoshan (a county in Xinyang) and died immediately and was buried there.
After your grandmother learned of the news of my grandfather’s death, she kept crying, and her sadness and lack of food made her body very weak, and she also passed away after two or three months.
Son: Did your second uncle and third uncle, as cadres, provide any help? Did they have any reaction?
Mother: At that time, your third uncle (referring to my mother’s third uncle) was a small official in the brigade (now called the village). The brigade headquarters always had meals, and I secretly went to eat at that time, and I was very afraid of being discovered. I would occasionally go to eat, and I didn’t dare to tell others after I came back. So the brigade cadres didn’t starve to death at that time, and their family members rarely starved to death.
Your second uncle would sometimes send money back, and in the autumn of 1959, we could still buy things. After the end of 1959, we couldn’t buy anything anymore. I don’t know if it was because there was no grain or because they didn’t allow it to be sold. At that time, money was useless. Some people took out their clothes, foreign money, and other household items to exchange for food. After 1959, they could no longer exchange these things for any food.
Son: What was the situation in Anhui, which is near us? You didn’t go to Anhui to ask relatives for help (Note: Our hometown borders Funan County, Fuyang Prefecture, Anhui Province, and some of our relatives are from Anhui. Including my grandmother, who is also from Wangying Village, Funan County, Anhui Province)
Mother: Anhui was slightly better than Henan. In 1959, I went to my second aunt’s place to pick up beans, but it didn’t work there either. The relatives at that time couldn’t take care of others either. One thing that left a deep impression on me was that there were no boats in the river at that time, so I rowed a boat by myself. Once, the boat was swept to the middle of the river, and I was scared to death.
Son: What was the situation of people starving to death in the whole village at that time?
Mother: At that time, some people didn’t eat for several days and starved to death directly. Others ate wild vegetables and wild grass, and their bodies were extremely weak, and they naturally died slowly. At that time, more than 100 people died in the whole village, accounting for 1/3 to 1/2 of the total number of people in the village.
Son: Have you seen or heard of people eating people? What was the situation of people starving to death in the whole place?
Mother: There were cases of cannibalism in our place. There was a neighbor of ours, Cai Jiaxuan’s mother. One morning, when I met her, she was carrying a basket, and the basket was filled with dead human flesh, and blood was still dripping from the basket. People from your village (the village where my father lived – Gucheng Village), including one of your relatives and your godfather’s mother, also ate human flesh. The eyes of those who had eaten human flesh were different; they stared straight at people.
At that time, the wild grass on Gucheng Street grew taller than people, because no one went to the market at all, and the whole street was empty. People couldn’t walk either, and sometimes people died on the road while walking. If someone looked relatively fat (because of edema), they might be harmed on the road, and their flesh would be eaten by those who were extremely hungry.
Son: Even at this time, no one raised any opinions? Did the villagers have any other relief measures?
In 1959, no one raised any opinions. If anyone raised any opinions, the village cadres would beat them. Even if they were starving like this, no one raised any opinions, still because of fear.
Only one person could speak, and his name was Jian Fengzi, and some people said he was a god, because he sometimes predicted things very accurately. He often said: “People eat people, dogs eat dogs, and rats gnaw bricks because of hunger.” But because he was regarded as a madman, he said it openly on Gucheng Street at the time, and no one cared.
In addition, the policy in 1959 was very strict. If anyone didn’t hand over their grain and food to the public, they would dig three feet into the ground. In 1959, individual commune members’ homes were not allowed to smoke or burn pots, and wild vegetables were not allowed to be eaten. Some people secretly dug wild vegetables to eat, but if the village cadres found wild vegetables in their homes, they would beat the people who hid the wild vegetables. If they found that someone’s home was smoking, the village cadres would smash that person’s pot. The village cadres once went to our home to look for grain and wild vegetables, and they used a large iron rod to dig everywhere in the yard. The grain that some people had hidden in the earthen stoves was discovered and then taken away and confiscated. A few families, because they were hungry, started a fire in their homes to cook vegetable soup, and as a result, the pot was smashed, and of course, the vegetable soup they cooked couldn’t be eaten.
Son: Did the cadres at that time also not reflect the situation to the higher authorities?
Mother: At that time, people were not allowed to raise opinions, not allowed to talk nonsense, and not allowed to move around at will. Your great-grandmother went to Xinyang City to see your second uncle, and your second uncle didn’t let your great-grandmother talk about people starving to death. Because he was also afraid. Your third uncle was a brigade cadre in 1959, and he knew it too, but he couldn’t talk about it either.
Son: Did anyone do farm work at that time?
Mother: In the winter of 1959 and the spring of 1960, no one did any work. The people at that time were so hungry that they couldn’t walk, let alone work.
Son: From when did we start to have food to eat?
Mother: In March and April of 1960, relief grain was delivered to the production teams one after another, and the production teams started to cook again. It was still a public canteen at that time, and although we still couldn’t eat our fill, it was much better.
After the wheat harvest in 1960, the commune members still ate in the public canteen, but because there was a harvest, the commune members could almost eat their fill. In the autumn of 1960, the village began to allocate private plots, and we could plant our own crops without handing over public grain. From then on, the public canteen may have disbanded, and after that, public grain was distributed based on work points.
Son: So many people starved to death at that time, did they not deal with the cadres?
Mother: In the autumn of 1960 or the spring of 1961, the government conducted a democratic make-up class, and they carried out education and criticism of the village cadres’ behavior during the Great Famine (such as beating people, not giving food to the commune members, and exaggeration). The cadres who were most responsible had to “sit in the big warehouse” (a local slang term, which seems to mean sitting in a dark room and being confined), but they were not imprisoned or executed.
Son: What happened to you after you became an orphan?
Mother: At that time, your great-grandmother had already returned from Xinyang City, and I lived with her until I married your father. Your great-grandmother lived until the year you were born.
Source: Archives of the Great Famine www.chinafamine.net
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