Wake up（72）

 

72

 

The three of He Jiafu and his party sat beside a boulder by a small stream in the forest, and the old man Li Tiandao told the story of starvation in Sichuan during the Great Famine.

The period from the Lushan Conference in 1959 to the spring of 1960 was the period when the largest number of people starved to death in China. Li Tiandao said that Wushan County, Sichuan Province shoveled out "Long Live Chairman Mao!" five towering characters on the cliffs of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River. Financial and material resources, 200,000 catties of lime mortar for scribbling words alone were used up, and 5 rightists died of exhaustion because of this.

In 1959, Sichuan actually produced 15.82 million tons of grain. The output announced by Sichuan Province in that year was as high as 35 million tons. As a result, the higher authorities requisitioned 49% of the public grain according to the falsely reported output. Take food. In Yibin City, more than 2,500 grassroots cadres were tied up and beaten in the "anti-concealment of production". The Renshou County "anti-concealment of production" meeting called the commune officials in the county one by one to the stage and beat them, forcing them to ask "where did they hide the food?" As a result, the little life-saving rations left by the farmers were confiscated, causing about 200,000 people in the county to starve to death.

In addition to exaggerated high yields and violent high-level purchases that wiped out the farmers' rations, large-scale water conservancy and large-scale iron and steel smelting have caused the food to fail to be collected and rotted in the field, causing a major reduction in production. Their production and living conditions, they are only allowed to drink big pots of clear soup in public cafeterias, and even they are not allowed to run away from famine begging for food to escape on their own, thus forcing farmers to a dead end and starving to death. This is also an important reason why the most starved to death in Sichuan.

According to Liao Zhigao, Secretary of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee, since 1958, Sichuan’s production has been greatly reduced year after year, while the transfer of grain from abroad has increased year after year. In 1958, 3.96 billion catties were transferred outside, in 1959, 4.9 billion catties were transferred outside, and in 1960, 6.84 billion catties were transferred outside. The three-year transfer of grain was more than the sum of the previous five years. At the same time as a large amount of food was transferred out, the larger-scale infrastructure construction in Sichuan rushed forward, and more than 6 million people were employed just to build reservoirs.

During the Great Famine, peasants all over the country hated the public canteens, but Li Jingquan guessed the sacred meaning, followed closely, and creatively proposed that "the public canteen is the heart of the people's commune", concentrated all living resources in the canteen, and prohibited the farmers themselves from cooking. As a result, during the nationwide starvation climax from the autumn and winter of 1959 to the spring of 1960, many public canteens in Sichuan closed down or closed down in disguise for several months, and farmers were not allowed to cook their own food, finally driving tens of millions of farmers to a dead end.

Li Tiandao said that the Chunhua Management District of Chengxi Commune in Dianjiang County, Fuling District began to run out of grain after the spring harvest in 1959, and bound, tied, hung, and beat members of the commune in the name of "anti-production concealment" and "anti-theft", and arbitrarily deducted them. rice, resulting in the death of a large number of farmers. In 1958, there were 420 households and 1,818 people in this management area. By 1961, there were only 344 households and 1,138 people. The population decreased by 37.4% and the labor force decreased by 40%. There was a cafeteria in the management area that used to accommodate 141 people, but by January 1961, only 70 people remained, and half of them died of starvation. There were originally 135 people in the Ancestral Bay canteen, but 65 people died, including 8 households. Guo Shiyi, a member of the fourth production team, had 11 people in his family, but 10 people died, leaving only one child. After the baby and his wife of Fuyin Zhongde in Nongguo Township, Yunyang County starved to death, he was also skinny and boneless. When he was so hungry that he lost his mind, he lay on the ground and bit his fingers, biting off the skin and a few fingernails The bite was bloody, and there was blood between the teeth on the mouth. Someone asked him why he bit his finger, and he said, "I ate... I ate sweet potatoes... sweet potatoes." He died that day.

The Wenjiang area, which sits on the fertile Western Sichuan Plain, is a suburban county of Chengdu. During the Great Leap Forward, the total population dropped from 4.94 million to 4.33 million, a net decrease of 610,000 people, and at least 800,000 people were devoured by starvation including births; One out of five people died of starvation; the death rate in the third management area of Daozuo Commune in Qionglai County reached 40%, and 6 hungry people on a slope were pecked by swarms of crows. The total population of Pi County dropped sharply from 280,000 to 230,000, and no less than 70,000 died of starvation including births.

A vagabond artist fled for his life, but was ordered by the head of the commune's dissuasion station to have his legs broken and his "dog's head" smashed. According to a 1961 investigation by the Wenjiang Prefectural Committee, in March 1958, Lao Mao visited the Red Light Club in Pixian County when he was promoting the Great Leap Forward in Chengdu. There were 4,020 people in that year, and only 2,750 people remained when celebrating the third anniversary of the Emperor’s Enlightenment. One-third of the people have really entered the utopian paradise created by Lao Mao. In 2008, Mr. Yan Wenhan and his friends in Chengdu took a video camera to the former Hongguangshe to shoot relevant materials. They heard from local elders that in the west of Chengdu, near Shuxi Road outside the third ring road, there were ten thousand people who died of hunger buried during the Great Famine. pit. Yan Wenhan and others went to the site to find out that the land is in full swing, and construction projects are in full swing, followed by roads and high-rise buildings, and a large number of unjust and hungry ghosts will be buried forever under the city's steel and concrete, and even disappear from the memory of the world forever.

Li Tiandao also said that the "Xichong County Chronicle" collected by the library records that the population of Xichong decreased by 59,430 during the Great Leap Forward, and no less than 80,000 people died of starvation when counting the birth population, which was about 400,000 in Xichong that year. Xie Mingxu, a native of Xichong, wrote the book "Songs in the Fault", which contains many images and vivid records of the Great Leap Forward: "The fields, houses, cattle, farm tools, pigs, chickens, ducks and geese are all owned by the collective. All the stoves were searched out to set up a public canteen, and adults and children all ate in the large urn pots of the food group. Within three months, the little things collected were exhausted. In addition to eating bark and wild vegetables, people drank small Ball algae, salt well water, in addition to suffering from edema, and under the threat of the whip, "dry it during the day, dry it at night, and dry it with the sun and the moon on your back". He also wrote down what his elder brother told him when his second brother returned home for the first time in 1962 after being away for many years: "Three years after the Great Leap Forward, the edema disease could not withstand it, and dozens of people starved to death in the yard.  … …What’s worse is that your elder sister had five children, the oldest was only 13 years old, and four of them starved to death in just over a year from 1959 to 1960.”

Li Tiandao said that Wang Yanxu, a famous anti-Japanese general from Xichong, a well-known educator, who was the chairman of Sichuan Province in the Republic of China and the commander-in-chief of the 29th Army, starved to death in a detention center in Chengdu in 1961, and his six sons were labeled as rightists. Or counter-revolutionary, some children directly starved to death during the Great Leap Forward. A Mr. Song from Xichong Street died tragically in the famine when he was labeled as a rightist and sent to the countryside for reconstruction. His family was also implicated and sent to the village.

The sun is scorching in summer. The scorching sun is scorching the earth, everywhere is like a big furnace, only the shade of lush trees can slightly block the oncoming heat wave.

But at this moment, He Jiafu, who was resting by the stream in the forest, couldn't calm down. The story of starvation in Sichuan told by the old man Li Tiandao reveals the little-known truth about the famine era.