THE RETIRED OFFICIAL

When famine first struck Sichuan in 1960, I was two years old. Since my mother couldn't get enough milk or food to feed me, I was dying from severe edema and my body puffed up like a loaf of bread. Thanks to an herbal doctor, I miraculously survived, but millions of other children and adults didn't. Experts believe that an estimated thirty million people starved to death in the 1958–1961 famine. Zheng Dajun, a retired government official, headed a government work team at a rural region in Sichuan around that time. He witnessed the devastating impact of the famine, which he said was a shameful chapter in the history of the Chinese Communist Party.

I met Zheng in June of 2002 at a resort in Huilonggou, Chongqing County. Zheng was seventy-two years old. He was short with broad shoulders and looked very distinguished. Before his retirement, Zheng had held senior positions in the Sichuan provincial government.

LIAO YIWU: When I was growing up, we normally referred to the 1958–1961 famine as “three years of natural disasters.” The government attempted to cover up its mistakes by blaming the famine on drought and flood, even though many areas hit by the famine had mild weather conditions during that time.

ZHENG DAJUN: Most people knew exactly what had happened, but nobody dared to challenge the official version. That part of the history has been treated as a “state secret.” In 1959, Marshal Peng Dehuai wrote to Chairman Mao and criticized his extreme policies which had led to the disasters. Marshal Peng was purged and persecuted to death during the Cultural Revolution. Things have changed now. From the information that has been made public we have learned that the famine was mostly manmade. I think the Communist Party owes an honest explanation and apology to the Chinese people, especially the peasants.

LIAO: I don't think that's going to happen soon. Could you tell me about your experience during those three years of hardship?

ZHENG: I joined the Communist army to fight against the Nationalists in 1948, at the age of eighteen. Two years later, after the new China was founded, I was demobilized and assigned to work in the rural areas. My job was to mobilize peasants to participate in the Land Reform movement. Since my family couldn't afford to send me to school when I was a kid, I was illiterate. So I worked during the day and took literacy classes in the evenings. I made good progress in my education and as a result, I was promoted very fast. By the time I turned twenty-six in 1958, I had become the deputy director of the County Agricultural Task Force.

In the 1950s, people were passionate about the new Communist government and would do anything the Party called on them to do. For example, Chairman Mao said sparrows ate the crops and needed to be eliminated. Soon, a nationwide campaign was launched and everyone turned out to chase and catch sparrows. After two years, sparrows nearly disappeared in China. Little did we know that killing sparrows would disrupt the delicate balance of nature. Sparrows ate crops, but they also ate bugs, which flourished and brought disasters to many areas after the sparrows had gone. But passion was running so high that nobody dared to question the practice in a scientific way. Similar things happened in the Great Leap Forward campaign.

In the spring of 1958, the county chief dispatched me to inspect progress on the Great Leap Forward at the Second Production Division of Dongyang Commune. Let me give you some background because many young people don't know much about that period. The late fifties were a critical period for the Party. The split between the Soviet Union and our country began to widen. The world's two largest socialist countries started turning hostile to each other. Increasingly, the Soviets threatened to withdraw financial aid. Chairman Mao and the Central Party Committee realized that China had to become zili gengsheng, or self-reliant and independent. We had to transform our country into an advanced industralized country within a short time. That was why Chairman Mao launched the Great Leap Forward campaign. The slogan at that time was “We are running toward an advanced Communist society.”

The region where I stayed was hilly country, with very fertile land and mild weather conditions. It was famous for rice, wheat, corn, beans, and sweet potatoes. However, after the Great Leap Forward started, people were in such haste to produce results that they began to discard traditional ways of farming. The commune leaders followed instructions from the Party and ordered peasants to use a new method called “reasonable density,” which had been invented by a Soviet scientist. Based on that new method, furrows were plowed very deep. Rice or wheat seedlings were planted very densely. The Party claimed that the method could increase the grain output ten times. Newspapers carried big photos of densely planted rice, with headlines like “Peasants in Such-and-Such County Have Produced Miracles.” Many peasants knew that it was an impossible task, but nobody wanted to be labeled “backward and conservative.” They began to follow suit and experiment. Members of the Dongyang Commune planted and packed the seedlings as tightly as possible in one mu [0.164 acre] of farmland. Initially, those green seedlings looked terrific. Not long after our work team left, a friend from the region told us that many had died and the surviving ones didn't pollinate or set. The commune leaders got really worried because another inspection team sent by the provincial government was coming. So they ordered peasants to pull twenty mu of healthy rice planted in the traditional way and move them over to a small plot right before the inspection team arrived. As expected, the inspectors left, fully impressed. Reporters wrote a long feature with a big picture of the commune Party secretary. He was seen smiling and waving. The article attracted many admirers and visitors to the region. It became quite a circus. Nationwide, officials tried to outbid one another in producing agricultural miracles. Deception became quite common at that time.

In the fall of 1958, our country switched its focus from agriculture to steel production. Our slogan was chao-ying-gan-mei—“surpassing the U.K. and catching up with the U.S.” For the second time, the county sent me to Dongyang Commune with a work team. All the peasants, old and young, men and women, climbed up the nearby mountain. They cut down trees to fuel backyard furnaces and searched for iron ore. Meanwhile, officials went from door to door, ordering peasants to hand over their pots and pans, metal doorknobs, and farm tools for smelting. They kept the furnace going day and night. There was nobody harvesting crops, which were left to rot in the field. The mountain was stripped of forest. To cap it off, the “iron” they produced was totally useless.

LIAO: After the peasants handed in their pots and pans, how did they cook?

ZHENG: All private property had been confiscated to pave the way for a full-blown Communist society. They told the peasants to dismantle their stoves for a communal kitchen set up for each village. It became illegal to cook your own meal at home. In one village, all families moved into a big warehouse so they could live together as a big socialist family. Prior to collectivization, many families had raised pigs, sheep, and chickens. Then the commune seized all the animals and penned them in the commune lot.

The second day after our arrival, the Party secretary took us to a communal kitchen at lunchtime. When we walked in, everyone stopped eating, stood up, and welcomed us with applause. Then they began to sing “Socialism is good.” On behalf of the work team, I asked the peasants if they had enough food to eat. They all raised their voices and shouted in unison, Yes. Then a singer from the village performed to the accompaniment of bamboo clappers. He was singing something like this: Peasants no longer depend on heaven or earth for their livelihood. They depend on Chairman Mao and the Communist Party, which has brought happiness and bumper harvests.

I walked up to each table and shook hands with everyone. I noticed corn bread piled up on their tables. Two big pots filled with sweet potato porridge sat in the corner of the kitchen. Each peasant, regardless of age, was allowed four big pieces of corn bread with all the porridge they wanted.

One peasant came up to me and complained that the bread and porridge didn't last long: We need to have some meat or oil. The Party secretary pushed him away by saying: If you work hard, China will become a true Communist society. When that takes place, we will have an abundant supply of meat. You can eat a whole pig if you want.

The guy walked away, with a confused expression on his face. The Party secretary told me to ignore him.

Then he escorted six of us into a private dining room, where a table full of “twice-cooked pork,” “stewed pig intestines,” and roast chicken was waiting. I asked why we were treated differently. The Party secretary answered: The commune leadership had a meeting yesterday and decided to slaughter a pig and some chickens to show our respect for the county work team members. In those years, it was very common for local officials to bribe work team members so they could report good news back to the government. In response, the Central Party Committee had promulgated strict rules to crack down on corruption. So we were very prudent. I told the commune Party secretary to bring us some corn bread and porridge and dish out the meat to peasants during dinner.

In the late fall of 1960, I led another work team to Dongyang Commune. That was my third trip. Things had changed dramatically. The Great Leap Forward distracted peasants from their farmwork. Crop yields were reduced, but peasants had to fulfill the government grain quotas. In many places, commune leaders had turned over the grain that peasants saved over the years to meet the quotas. Peasants were left with little food for the winter.

The once prosperous communal kitchen was in disrepair. The wall separating the kitchen and the dining hall had been demolished because peasants accused cooks of embezzling food. They wanted to see exactly what the cooks were doing. At lunchtime, hundreds of people lined up, each carrying a bowl in their hand. They looked feeble. Lao Wang, a fellow work team member, told the Party secretary not to disturb the lunch crowd. We simply stood outside and watched. The dining hall looked very empty. All the tables and chairs had gone. The food served at lunch was porridge mixed with vegetables, rice, and husks. After people got their share, they squatted around in various circles. Most poured the porridge into their mouths quickly, then they all licked their bowls very attentively, as if they were going to swallow the porcelain container. One local official who was our aide told me in private that having the rice and husk porridge was considered a special treat. Under normal circumstances, they could only have sweet-potato soup. We were really shocked. At the county level, food was scarce but each official was guaranteed a fixed amount per month. Nobody was starving there. Seeing the crowd here, I felt really guilty.

After peasants finished their meals, the Party secretary led us into the dining hall and yelled loudly: Please welcome the comrades from the county work team to our commune. Everyone stood up and began to applaud rhythmically while shouting the slogan three times: The communal kitchen is good. We have excellent food. Thanks to Chairman Mao! Thanks to the Party for leading us onto the socialist road! Before their slogan shouting ended, several people collapsed to the floor, too weak to stand up for so long.

That evening, the work team called a public meeting, where I relayed the latest news to the peasants: Considering the extremely difficult situation in the rural areas, the Party had decided to reverse some of its earlier collectivization policies. Confiscated private property would be returned to its previous owners. Attendees were very excited at the news. One old guy stood up and said with tears in his eyes: Thank heavens! I can finally die under my own roof. But local officials, including the commune Party secretary, pulled long faces and remained sullen throughout my speech. After the meeting was over, the Party secretary pulled me aside and said, There's nothing to give back to the peasants. Over the past two years, people have grabbed and stolen most of the public assets. They even smashed the big rice container in the public kitchen as a protest. I can't blame them because they are hungry. It's hopeless. I criticized him for being too pessimistic about the future. He defended himself by saying: As a Communist Party official, I have tried to do my work. But this is truly a tough situation. More and more people are dying of starvation. Do you know that people in this region are turning into cannibals?

His remarks came as a shock. I probed further. The Party secretary looked around and then whispered to me: My daughter is married to a guy at a village on the other side of the mountain. She ran back home last week, telling me that many little girls in her village have been killed and eaten.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. If what he said was true, I needed to report the information back to the county as soon as possible. So I sent a fellow team member back to headquarters. I borrowed a bicycle and went directly to the village that the Party secretary had mentioned. I briefed Comrade Liu, the head of the work team there. He was totally in the dark about what was going on in the village.

In the week that followed, the county conducted a thorough investigation and revealed a terrible scandal involving cannibalism at the Fifth Production Division. That division encompassed 82 families, with a population of 491. Between December 1959 and November 1960, peasants had killed and eaten 48 female children under the age of seven, which represented 90 percent of the female children in that age group. About 80 percent of the families were involved in cannibalism.

Wang Jiefang was an accountant at the Fifth Production Division. He was the first one to witness cannibalism. During the investigation, he told us that starvation occurred at his village in December 1959 when the communal kitchen had run out of food and began to serve wild vegetable soup or plain hot water. With food running out, villagers began to search for other alternative means. They wandered all over the mountain, eating anything they could get—leaves, roots of grass, wild vegetables, mushrooms, and worms. Many people accidentally swallowed some poisonous plants and died. As people became more and more desperate, they turned to their fellow human beings.

It was a different story for village officials. They had embezzled the grain and secretly cooked and ate the food several times a week at the communal kitchen after midnight. When confronted by the guilt-ridden security chief who was invited to the midnight meals, the village chief said, Ordinary villagers can collapse from hunger, but not the Party officials. If anything happens to us, the revolution would lose its backbone. After stuffing themselves with embezzled food, those hypocritical officials would patrol the village, making sure that nobody was violating the policies and no smoke came out of individual home chimneys.

Wang and another village security guard were on duty on a clear moonlit night. While patrolling the village, they noticed wisps of smoke coming out of Mo Erwa's house. Wang was quite surprised because Mo Erwa was quite an honest peasant who had never done anything illegal before. He and his wife had seven kids. Two of them had already died of starvation. So Wang and the guard decided to find out if Mo Erwa had stolen food from somewhere.

Mo Erwa's house had both a big front yard and a backyard, fenced in by tall dry cornstalks. So Wang and the security guard crept along and hid behind the fence. They saw Mo Erwa's wife sitting at the front porch. Apparently, she was on the lookout for patrolling officials. Wang and the guards walked stealthily around to the back, where there was a door leading to the kitchen. Wang said he could see a small kerosene light glowing feebly in the dark. So he and the guard kicked the back door open and burst in. Wang raised his flashlight and yelled, Don't move. Mo Erwa and his kids were scared. They blew off the kerosene light and began running around in the dark, like rats. In the process, someone kicked over a big boiling pot on the ground. Then the whole room steamed up and smelled of greasy meat. Wang yelled again: Don't move. Otherwise I'm going to shoot. His threat worked. When Mo Erwa and the kids calmed down, Wang struck a match and re-lit the kerosene light. He realized that Mo Erwa had dug a hole in the kitchen floor and was using it as a makeshift stove. The pot lay upside down and chunks of meat lay scattered on the floor. Wang asked: Where did you get the meat from? Mo Erwa answered calmly: We just boiled our three-year-old daughter. The guard didn't believe what he had just heard. He picked up one piece from the floor and examined it under the flashlight. Before the guard had a chance to find out, Mo Erwa snatched it from the guard and stuffed it into his mouth. Then all the kids followed his example and dashed down to the floor to grab the remaining morsels. Despite Wang's yells and threats, the family devoured all the meat within minutes. Wang and the guard finally subdued Mo Erwa, tied his hands behind his back, and then dragged him to the village chief's office.

The next day, the village chief sent several guys over to investigate. They found a small bag of bones and the little girl's skull, which had been buried in the backyard. The village chief was so disgusted by the atrocity he ordered two militiamen to lash Mo Erwa fifty times. Mo Erwa screamed and his whole family knelt outside the interrogation room, appealing for mercy. According to Mo Erwa, the family didn't have anything to feed the little girl. Lack of food had stunted her growth. So they just killed her. The village chief interrupted Mo Erwa by saying: Do you know that killing and eating your daughter is a capital crime? Mo Erwa argued back: She was going to die of starvation anyway. It was better for us to sacrifice her to save the rest of the family. We just hope she would reincarnate into something else in the next life. It's too hard to be a human being.

After the lashing, the village chief convened a meeting with several other officials. They decided to keep it quiet for fear that the incident could cost them their jobs. So two days later, Mo Erwa was released, but his story soon spread fast among the villagers. They took it as a sign of approval from the government and more families began to follow suit. Since boys were traditionally favored over girls, young girls were targeted. Some families ruthlessly murdered and ate their own daughters. Others would exchange their children with neighbors. Since a child could only last them for a couple of days, some, including Mo Erwa, began to kidnap children from other villages. Booby traps, which were used for wolves, were employed to capture kids.

By the time we found out, the practice had spread to other villages.

LIAO: Did you report the results of the investigation to the provincial government?

ZHENG: I wrote a lengthy report and hand-delivered it to the county chief. I was hoping that the government could take legal measures to stop the killing of children and halt the spread of cannibalism in the region. I also recommended that the county chief bring those cases to the attention of the provincial government and ask for the badly needed food subsidies. But the chief sighed after reading my report: What can the provincial government do? The central government has already delivered food subsidies, thirty-five kilograms of rice and corn per family for the whole year. The whole country is experiencing hardship. He was right. The newspapers carried photos of Chairman Mao wearing patched jackets and pants. He had cultivated a small garden in front of his house to grow vegetables. Liu Shaoqi, the president at that time, went to the Beijing suburbs to pick wild berries to supplement his food ration.

LIAO: Don't you think that was just for show? Chairman Mao and other senior leaders should be held responsible for the famine.

ZHENG: I don't blame Chairman Mao. Local officials, such as Li Jinquan, the Party secretary of the Southwest Regional Bureau, should take full responsibility for the disasters in our province. He hid the truth from the Central Party Committee. He forced peasants to turn over all their grain to the central government, despite the fact that people were starving to death. He told the central government that Sichuan Province had wonderful climate conditions and an oversupply of grain. He even offered to help out other provinces while people in his region were dying of starvation.

At Dongyang Commune, and in all the rural areas of Sichuan, peasants ate a type of white clay called Guanyin Mud. I tried it once. The stuff tasted sweet and metallic. The clay was considered precious because it helped soothe the sense of extreme hunger. Some ate too much and the mud got stuck inside the intestines. Then hunger turned into painful cramps. I constantly saw people writhing on the ground with severe stomach pain from the clay. The most effective laxatives were raw vegetable oil or castor oil, which cleared out the mud but also killed people with uncontrolled diarrhea.

In those years, the lives of ordinary people were worthless. Those in power had access to food. They didn't have to eat white clay or kill their daughters. But poor families had to resort to extreme means to survive.

LIAO: How did you finally stop the practice of cannibalism in the region?

ZHENG: Three months after our investigation, Mo Erwa was caught again. He had kidnapped and killed two boys from a nearby village with booby traps. This time, the county had to take action. The local militiamen arrested Mo Erwa and put him on trial. He was sentenced to death. The county held a public execution with the hope of intimidating villagers and preventing more cases of cannibalism. Before the local militiaman shot him, Mo Erwa screamed loudly: I'm innocent. I was hungry. His cries brought tears to the eyes of the local militiamen. They couldn't pull the trigger. Eventually, the county had to get the police to finish the job.

LIAO: What happened later on?

ZHENG: In the spring of 1961, there was still no relief from the famine. I went back again to Dongyang Commune as head of a four-man work team. I wasn't doing too well either. My legs were all swollen. I was literally wobbling all day long. We ate lots of corn soup with wild vegetables and grass. I was quite young at that time and pulled through. Also, I could indulge myself with a couple of nice hearty meals each time I returned to the county government to attend my monthly meetings. There was enough food for officials at the county cafeteria.

LIAO: People in the city were much better off than those in the rural areas.

ZHENG: Urban residents were guaranteed a monthly ration. The government called on urban residents to donate food and money to peasants in the rural areas. But it was too little to make a dent. In my region, a second wave of cannibalism began. Luckily, none of the cases involved killing children. People simply cut flesh off those who had died of starvation.

LIAO: Did you arrest more people to stop the practice?

ZHENG: Legally, it fell into a gray area because those people didn't kill anyone. It was hard to prosecute. Leaving moral and ethical issues out, we had to admit that eating human flesh was a better alternative than eating white clay. It was easy to digest, even though we were told by medical personnel that one could catch all sorts of disease from consuming a dead person's flesh. People were desperate and didn't care what diseases they could catch. When a relative died, the flesh would be cut off for the living.

When that occurred, we really didn't have any legal justifications to arrest people. We simply turned a blind eye. Well, there were many villagers who resisted eating human flesh. One time, I went to visit several families in a big courtyard. Four villagers were lying on top of wooden doors taken from their houses. They were lying on their stomachs, with their legs spread apart. Several others were pouring tung oil into their rear ends to loosen them up. One guy explained to me that initially, they had tried to force people to drink the tung oil, but it smelled and tasted really bad. Many had thrown up, and it was hard to get it into the intestines. So they decided to do it from the other end. I recommended that they use vegetable oil, which was less poisonous. Those folks looked at me strangely and said: Do you know that we have never seen any vegetable oil for over two years? It's true that tung oil is tough on the intestines. But as long as we can get the clay out of our system, a little damage to the intestines is worth it. I couldn't stay and watch the operation. Before I walked out, one guy opened his eyes and said to me: Tell the government that we have never touched human flesh. We would rather die than commit a crime like that.

I didn't know how to answer him. Looking back, you have to admit that Chinese peasants are the most kind and obedient. They never thought of rebelling against those who had brought them so much suffering. I bet the idea had never occurred to them.

LIAO: Even if they had had the idea, they wouldn't have gotten far. The Party controlled the guns. Chairman Mao wasn't afraid of people rebelling against him. He could crush them like bugs.

ZHENG: The Party was worried about peasant rebellion. That was the reason they sent the work team to the rural areas. We were like the firefighters, trying to put out fires of discontent among peasants.

LIAO: Did you suceed?

ZHENG: We did. Aside from handling cases of cannibalism, our main job was to ease the Party's extreme policies and help peasants survive. There was a popular saying among officials at that time: “No matter whether it was a white cat or a black cat, if it catches the mouse, it is a good cat.” We would do whatever it took to save lives. The communal cafeteria was disbanded. Villagers were allowed to get their cooking utensils back. Brick stoves were rebuilt at each individual home so that peasants could cook their own meals. In the old days, the government subsidies were distributed to the commune, and commune officials would normally embezzle some and redistribute the rest to each individual production division. Then the production division would take some and then allocate the subsidies to each village communal kitchen. By the time the subsidized food landed in the bowl of each villager, there was only a tiny amount left. We streamlined the process by distributing the emergency food aid directly to the villagers. The daily ration was half a kilo per person. Members of the work team stood by the warehouse and made sure nobody was stealing the food aid. We also allocated a tiny plot of land for each family so they could grow some vegetables and crops for their own keep. Of course, that ziliudi, or “land for self-keep” system, came under fire during the Cultural Revolution as a capitalistic practice.

LIAO: Well, the “capitalist” policies did save lives during the famine, didn't it?

ZHENG: Yes. The situation gradually improved. In the summer of 1962, starvation pretty much stopped. Prior to 1962, we were under a lot of pressure to find food for peasants. We thought about food day and night and came up with many creative ways. For example, we gathered all the dry corn, wheat, and rice stalks, ground them into powder, and boiled them for a long time to extract starch. Then we used the starch to make pancakes. They tasted pretty good. We also sent people to collect urine. We then poured the urine into a big container and mixed it with garbage. After a week, there would be a layer of green algae floating on top of the mess. We scraped the thin layer out, added some water and sugar, and drank it. It didn't taste bad at all.

LIAO: I have to say that you guys were dedicated Party officials. By the way, I read an article recently, saying that during the three-year famine, peasants in a village rounded up former landlords, rich peasants, and other counterrevolutionaries, slaughtered them, boiled their bodies in an open-air cauldron, and then ate the flesh. People then shouted and screamed in celebration of what they called “triumph in class struggle.” Did you witness anything like that?

ZHENG: No. I strongly question the accuracy of the story. Cannibalism was driven by hunger, not by hatred. It is true that the landowning class was attacked in several political campaigns, but I'm not aware of any incident like what you have just mentioned. There was a commonly accepted moral standard in the rural areas that eating human flesh was wrong, even though it was the flesh of a counterrevolutionary. Moreover, cannibalistic activities were carried out secretly because people knew that if they were caught, they would have been punished by the people's government. Cannibalism occurred when our government couldn't feed its people. It's unfortunate that we lost more people in peacetime than during the war. The Party made some serious mistakes. Half a century has passed, yet the leadership still hasn't offered an official explanation to people. It's sad.