Wake up（65）

 

65

 

In the summer forest, He Jiafu and his grandson Nan Shanyun met the old man Li Tiandao by chance on the way to visit Chai Jianhua. The three of them walked together, and when passing through the forest, they accidentally discovered the unowned tombs left over from the era of the Great Famine. It turned out that this place was once a hell for wandering souls and hungry ghosts.

Nan Shanyun, who was only 18 years old, asked his grandfather He Jiafu curiously: "What is going on with this famine? Why are there so many unowned cemeteries?"

He Jiafu sighed: "To understand what happened to the Great Famine, I'm afraid we have to start with the Xinyang Incident. From October 1959 to April 1960, the Xinyang Special District of Henan Province at that time, including today's Xinyang City and Zhumadian City , there was a large-scale famine, and a large number of farmers starved to death. This incident is also called the Xinyang incident.

After the launch of the Great Leap Forward Movement in the 1950s, exaggeration prevailed in Xinyang. Along with the People’s Commune Movement, frequent “satellite movements” covered up the serious false reporting of grain production under the exaggeration. After the Lushan Conference, under the anti-right trend in Henan Province, officials at all levels were worried about being labeled as right-leaning, and forcibly collected grain from farmers according to the grain procurement standards formulated by falsely reporting production. Even so, the goal of food procurement was still difficult to achieve, and the whole incident eventually became a typical example of local famine during the Great Famine. According to a report submitted to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1961 by Xinyang, Henan Province, the incident caused at least 1 million unnatural deaths. "

He Jiafu recalled the Xinyang incident, and now has a deep reflection. He said: In response to the "Great Leap Forward" call put forward by Mao Zedong and other leaders in 1957, in the spring of 1958, Chen Bingyin, then deputy director of the Agricultural Work Department of Suiping County, proposed the idea of merging agricultural cooperatives to Xinyang area; Chayashan Township mobilized villagers Parade with the slogan "Running into Communism", requesting the establishment of a large society. At the same time, the top leaders of the CCP also began to contemplate the People's Commune, a grassroots organization unit that combines industry and agriculture. The idea of merging the large communes in Chayashan Township and the people's communes envisioned by the top leaders hit it off, and Chen Bingyin's idea was immediately approved. During the People's Commune Movement and the Great Leap Forward Movement, the Qiyi Commune in Gushi County alone had 46,161 households with 201,075 people, the largest in Henan Province. The first people's commune in Chaya Mountain, Suiping County, Xinyang, quickly gained attention under the wave of the "Great Leap Forward": false and overreported agricultural production "satellites" and Hanlou Brigade's 2.9 mu of wheat experimental fields with a yield of 3,821 catties per mu were reported one after another. On the "People's Daily".

He Jiafu said: In March 1959, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China ignored the fact that the country's grain production had dropped sharply that year. At the Shanghai meeting, it decided to purchase 135 billion catties of grain across the country in accordance with the 1958 standard. The 135 billion catties of grain purchased became Xinyang. The source of the Great Famine. In 1959 and 1960, the per capita grain left by farmers across the country decreased sharply, from 250 catties in 1957 to 174 catties. In 1959, grain production decreased by 11%, but the amount of requisition increased by 14.7%. The main reason is that Lao Mao held a large number of Peng Dehuai meetings in Lushan, and launched an anti-rightist movement all over the country. The cadres were afraid of being regarded as rightist elements, and they used dictatorship methods to forcibly seize their basic living rations from farmers.

He Jiafu said, I still remember the ballad at that time:

 

Cadres are like Lord Hades,

The brigade is like the palace of Hades;

I saw the living go,

There are no living people.

 

In 1958, the province's grain output was actually only 28.1 billion catties, but the Henan Provincial Party Committee advertised that it was 70.2 billion catties. However, in Suiping County, the former Xinyang area that belongs to Zhumadian City today, the grain harvest was delayed due to reasons such as heavy iron and steel smelting, and the wheat was not harvested in time, resulting in a loss of about 10% of the grain. The natural disaster in 1959 resulted in poor harvests, and the grain output in Xinyang was 3.258 billion catties, 46.1% less than that in 1958. However, in the context of the national Great Leap Forward, all the counties in the Xinyang region falsely reported their output. After summarizing, the Xinyang region falsely reported the output as 7.2 billion catties, and then in the entire Xinyang area, which only had about 3.2 billion catties of grain stocks, it was based on the standard of 7.2 billion catties. Requisition food.

It is not uncommon for grassroots cadres to force farmers to hand in grain when they cannot complete the procurement tasks, and it is not uncommon for farmers to be tied, tied, hung, beaten, and arrested. At the end of November, people starved to death in Mi County, Henan Province. Between January and February 1959, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the State Council, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Ministry of Grain received letters from the people one after another, reflecting that Xiayi, Yongcheng, and Yuzhou in eastern Henan were Severe edema and death occurred in counties such as Chengcheng and Luyi.

In August 1959, Wu Zhipu, the first secretary of the Henan Province of the Communist Party of China, returned to Zhengzhou after the Lushan Conference. He immediately held a meeting of cadres at the provincial, prefectural and county levels, and demanded that all counties and cities arrest "Little Peng Dehuai". The climax of the right opportunist struggle". In 1959, Henan's grain and cash crop production continued to decrease, and the annual grain output was only 21 billion catties, but Wu Zhipu still held high targets, emphasizing that the estimated output was 45 billion catties. On the other hand, with the development of anti-rightist deviation, everyone in the party is in danger; any grassroots cadre who fails to complete the procurement task is "Little Peng Dehuai" and will be criticized, and any farmer who does not pay enough food will be tied up and hanged , detention, and even house demolition.

In 1959, the grain harvest in Xinyang area was in short supply, and the actual grain output was more than 2 billion catties. However, under the anti-rightist trend, the counties dare not report the truth. The Office of the Prefectural Committee aggregated the grain output reported by the counties and obtained a result of 7.2 billion catties. During the discussion among the Standing Committee members (nine members) of the Prefectural Committee, only commissioner Zhang Shufan thought that the total annual output of the unharvested year may be only more than 3 billion catties, at most no more than 4 billion. Finally, the prefectural committee reported the output to the provincial party committee according to the output of 5 billion catties. Based on this, the Henan Provincial Party Committee assigned a 900 million grain purchase task to the Xinyang area. In order to overfulfill the task, the lower levels increased the amount step by step, and the purchase amount reached 1 billion catties. According to the instructions of "anti-concealment and private distribution of production", the Xinyang prefectural committee mobilized the militia and directed the county committees to go door-to-door to search for "grain concealed and hidden by farmers and grassroots cadres." In the process of "anti-concealment of production", more than 10,000 people were arrested in the Xinyang area, and farmers' rations and livestock feed were robbed. The procurement task was successfully completed. The whole region of Xinyang expropriated 1.6 billion catties of grain. As a result, the farmers’ annual rations were only over 100 catties, which was only enough for 4 months. The rations of Huangchuan, Guangshan and other counties were even less than 3 months.

In the 1950s, Gu Zhun, who was the director of the Shanghai Municipal Finance Bureau, was sent to Shangcheng County, Xinyang Prefecture for labor reform because he was labeled as a rightist. .

Since October 1958, most of the public canteens have stopped supplying food, and farmers began to flee from the famine.

In the winter of 1959, General You Taizhong returned to his hometown Xinyangshan County to visit his mother who was seriously ill. He witnessed the tragic famine of the local villagers, so he felt extremely painful. American scholar Cui Qi, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1998, whose parents were both from Xinyang, starved to death in 1960.

In order to verify some data, He Jiafu turned on his mobile phone and searched for information about the Xinyang incident. Relevant information shows that after attracting the attention of the CPC Central Committee, in December 1960, the Xinyang Prefectural Committee reported to the CPC Central Committee that:

According to preliminary reports, Zhengyang County originally reported that more than 18,000 people died last winter and this spring, and now the preliminary number has reached 80,000; Xincai County originally reported that 30,000 people died last winter and this spring, and the number has now increased to nearly 100. Ten thousand. The communes and brigades that were considered good in the past are now exposed to serious problems. In Xiping County, only Erlangmiao Commune was found to have serious problems. Now there are 13 communes in the county. Except for Chengguan Commune, which has relatively minor problems, the other 12 communes have serious problems. In the Chayashan People's Commune of Suiping County, only 600 people were reported dead in the past, but now nearly 4,000 people have been reported dead, accounting for 10% of the total population, and some teams died as high as 30%. All kinds of horrific counter-revolutionary atrocities occurred in almost all counties and communes. According to the preliminary exposure materials, not only the rural areas were serious, but also the cities, factories, government agencies, schools, shops, and hospitals were very serious. Of the 12 middle schools in Guangshan County, 8 middle school principals had blood debts. In Chengguan High School and Junior High School, it was initially reported that 28 teachers and students were beaten to death or forced to death. Great devastation, life is extremely difficult, really "ten rooms are empty, the family is poor."

Related reports said:

After reading the investigation report of the Central Working Group, Chairman Mao Zedong of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China severely criticized the cadres in Xinyang, saying that the Xinyang incident was the result of counter-revolutionaries taking power. He proposed that the Xinyang area should carry out remedial lessons of the democratic revolution and completely eliminate the remnants of the Kuomintang and the landlord class. Lao Mao defined the Xinyang incident at a meeting of heads of central bureaus at all levels and said: "The Xinyang incident was a rampant revenge by the class enemy. .” And then infer that there will be such problems everywhere in the country, but the degree is different.

State President Liu Shaoqi also stated that the landlord class in Xinyang was restored, the Xinyang incident was a counter-revolutionary incident, and the reason why the rich and corrupt and the remnants of the Kuomintang were rampant was because the "democratic revolution was not complete", and the people of Xinyang should be liberated a second time.

In November 1960, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China sent Li Xiannian, Wang Congwu, Xu Zirong, Tao Zhu, Wang Renzhong, etc. to Xinyang to carry out the "democratic revolution make-up class" campaign. Cadres from the Central Committee and Henan Province presided over the Jigongshan meeting, saying that the Xinyang cadres were not good enough. The central government transferred 452 cadres from various ministries and commissions, the Henan Provincial Party Committee transferred 1,844 cadres, and the Xinyang Prefectural Committee transferred 1,483 cadres to rectify the Xinyang area. , and also trained more than 8,000 former cadres, specially trained more than 5,000 people, and fought and criticized more than 10,000 people. 983 people were dismissed from their posts, investigated and disciplined for reflection, and 275 people were arrested and brought to justice.

In the winter of 1960, the Henan Provincial Party Committee reorganized the Guangshan County Party Committee and dispatched a working group to correct the mistakes of the "five styles", that is, the communist style, the exaggerated style, the blind command style, the specialization of cadres, and the forced order style. In December, the Xinyang Prefectural Committee issued a report to the Henan Provincial Party Committee and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China with the following sentence: “Because the landlords and rich peasants ‘missed the net’ during the land reform and ‘infiltrated the revolutionary camp in large numbers’, ‘implemented The restoration of the counter-revolutionary class', 'the feudal forces have made great mischief', resulting in 'extremely difficult lives for the masses'...'. During this period, eight county party secretaries in Xinyang were arrested. Except for Guangshan County party secretary Ma Longshan, whose death sentence was commuted to "death with reprieve", the others were sentenced to 2-3 years in prison.

In November 1960, Premier Zhou Enlai was entrusted by the Central Committee to draft the "Emergency Instruction Letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Concerning Current Policy Issues Concerning Rural People's Commune" (referred to as "Twelve Articles"), one of which clearly stated for the first time that farmers should be allowed to retain a small amount of private land and family business.

Mobile phones have data on unnatural deaths.

The death toll reported by the Xinyang Prefectural Party Committee to the Provincial Party Committee was 380,000, and the death toll according to the Xinyang local chronicles was 483,000. Li Jian and Li Zhenghai, who were directors of the Central Investigation Team at the time, reported 1.05 million to the Central Committee. On January 13, 1961, the Xinyang region reported the last statistics to the central government, which showed that the total population of the region was 8,086,526. From November 1959 to October 1960, the number of deaths was 1,070,321, accounting for 13.2% of the total population.

In 2012, researchers from Nanjing University included the unborn population due to the famine and the outflow population due to the famine into statistics, and analyzed that the Xinyang incident caused a population loss of about 1.25 million in the region.

He Jiafu said: "After the Xinyang incident was exposed, there was also accountability and accountability."

Wu Zhipu was forced to review to the central government three times, admitting that the number of abnormal deaths in Xinyang area was more than 1 million, and that he had "committed a serious crime against the people of Henan". However, Wu Zhipu was not severely punished. After the Cultural Revolution began in August 1966, a big-character poster titled "Wu Zhipu Killed by Thousands of Swords" appeared in Zhengzhou University. The big-character poster stated, "Wu Zhipu, the executioner who massacred the people of Henan, created the Xinyang Incident and the most serious Guangshan Incident among the Xinyang Incidents." ". After that, Wu Zhipu, who went to work in Sichuan, was taken back to Henan by the revolutionary masses to criticize him, and finally died in 1967. But in 1979, Wu Zhipu was officially rehabilitated. On the afternoon of January 24, Deng Xiaoping personally rehabilitated Wu Zhipu and presided over a memorial service in the auditorium of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing. Deng Xiaoping declared in his eulogy: "All the slanderous and untrue words imposed on Comrade Wu Zhipu should be completely overthrown, and Comrade Wu Zhipu's reputation should be completely rehabilitated and his reputation restored." Deng Xiaoping said that he "dedicated himself to the liberation of the Chinese people and the cause of communism." , selflessly dedicated his life."

Lu Xianwen, secretary of the prefectural party committee of Xinyang area and the first political commissar of the military division at the time, was charged with dereliction of duty by the Henan Higher People's Court in Yu Fa Xing Yi Zi No. The crime was dealt with lightly, and he was sentenced to three years in prison, from November 16, 1960 to November 15, 1963. Lu Xianwen rejoined the party in 1975, and became the principal of Henan Baiquan Agricultural College (now Henan Institute of Science and Technology) in 1979, and resumed the treatment of senior officials at the deputy department level. He died of illness in 1993 and enjoyed the treatment of retired cadres. After the Cultural Revolution, he appealed for redress many times, but was named and criticized by Hu Yaobang.

He Jiafu said to his grandson Nan Shanyun and the old man Li Tiandao: "At that time, my old comrade Chai Jianhua and I wandered to Xinyang. In order to block the news and prevent people from fleeing, Xinyang adopted strict personnel control measures. There are more and more starvation cases, so that no one can bury the corpses, and the phenomenon of cannibalism continues to occur. In Gushi County alone, there are 200 cases of cannibalism officially recorded. The living people began to flee in large numbers in order to survive."

He Jiafu recalled: "At that time, the parents of Chai Jianhua, an old Chinese doctor, died of illness one after another. Chai Jianhua fled to Hong Kong with the help of his comrades-in-arms. His younger siblings also left Xinyang for Wuhan. At that time, Chai Jianhua and I were both in our early 30s. Chai Jianhua went to Before Hong Kong, he gave me an old house inherited from his ancestors. Because of poverty, I was missing a leg, so I couldn’t marry a wife. I spent that time alone in Xinyang.”