Wake up（74）

 

74

 

The summer evening is sultry. Although the sun in the sky has lost its arrogant attitude at noon, it still packs the whole world into a big steamer with malicious intentions.

Li Tiandao and his party started to set off again, heading west along the path in the woods.

Along the way, Li Tiandao continued to tell He Jiafu and Nanshan Yun the tragic story of the Great Famine in Sichuan.

In 1961, Liao Bokang, deputy director of the General Office of the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee and secretary of the Communist Youth League Committee, recalled what he saw when he went to Changshou County to carry out work: people in villages and villages were swollen and dying of hunger; trees were cut down everywhere, and houses were demolished Burnt, the peasants’ homes were completely desolate, and their houses were like pigsty; their private properties were confiscated, and they didn’t even have beds and bedding in winter; ;The population has been greatly reduced, the strong labor force has been lost, and the remaining orphans and widows are terrible...

Deng Zili, secretary of the Luzhou Municipal Party Committee at the time, recalled the great famine he experienced: "When there was not enough food, we made food substitutes, such as pea leaves, plantain heads, chlorella, wild grass roots, etc., to satisfy hunger. Later, these things were no longer found, and some people began to eat them. Avalokitesvara soil. After eating Avalokitesvara soil, my stomach swells and I can't excrete it. I was bloated to death after a few days..."

According to a survey conducted by the Sichuan Rectification and Rectification Coalition Daxian Working Group in August 1961, 214 of the 262 households in the Qingfeng Brigade of Daxia Commune in Quxian County had 755 people who ate dirt; 13 of the three production teams died of eating dirt. . According to the report, the results of investigations in Pujiashan, Taigongshi, Hedizi, Longfengzui, etc. are that the soil excavated by the masses is estimated to be more than 400 cubic meters, about 10,000 people excavated the soil, and the excavated soil was 500,000 about a catty. During the digging process, the masses had to wait in line under the scorching sun due to the small number of pits and the large number of people. In order not to dig the soil after climbing the mountain that day, the people in Luyuan spent the night at the Shalang Temple School on the mountain. Forty or fifty people lived here every night, and there were more than 100 people at most.

Zheng Dajun, head of the rural working group of the county party committee of Chongqing County, Sichuan Province (now Chongzhou City, Chengdu), described in detail the scenes of "hardening the walls and clearing the wilderness" in the countryside during the Great Famine, eating food without any choice, and eating Guanyin soil: It is illegal to start a gang, so the cadres patrol around in the middle of the night when they are full, to ensure that there is no smoke from the roof of every house. The public canteens, the only source of cooked food, survived in name only, and the masses had no choice but to wander wildly, eating whatever they could get. Leaves, branches, grass roots, wild vegetables, ground fungi, and even earthworms and ground silkworms have become rare delicacies, and later even the entire lawn is scrambling to shovel home. Most of the young and middle-aged people who were poisoned by foraging, foamed at the mouth, had a earthy complexion, and some even uttered "moo" when they died. Many commune members ate Guanyin clay, a lustrous white clay that was used by the famished to satisfy their hunger in the nick of life.

With a pinch of mud and a sip of water, I rolled my eyes and raised my neck several times, and my belly became heavy, and it became heavier and heavier. Finally, hunger turned into pain. When people hugged their stomachs, rolled on the ground, and convulsed, they swelled to death. The effective treatment method is to take excessive laxatives: lettuce oil, tung oil or even castor oil, which dissolves the mud and gastrointestinal mucosa at the same time, making you go to the opposite of bloated death - diarrhea. Nevertheless, Guanyin soil is still a treasure, and people dig out the mountain mud to brighten the mountain.

Li Tiandao said to He Jiafu and Nanshan Yun:

Accompanied by hunger, rural cadres have become a habit of beating people. They arbitrarily impose tortures such as kneeling, binding, hanging and beating on farmers, as well as various punishments such as searches and confiscation of property. normal death. Among the 144 cadres above the production team in the three communes of Feilong, Zhangde, and Yutian in Gulin County, Sichuan Province, one-third beat members, and 124 members were tied up and beaten by them. 33 people. Of the 70 households in the Sixth Team of the Liuyi Management District of the Yangtze River Commune in Xuyong County, 64 households had their food detained. Some communes stipulate that members do not go out on holiday, do not work, do not participate in meetings, do not hand in wild vegetables, do not hand in green fodder, and all meals will be deducted. Among the 441 cadres at or above the head of the food group in Taoping Commune in Changning County, Sichuan, 212 had been detained, 19 had been beaten, 48 had been tied up, and 31 had died from ill-treatment. In the production team of Niankan, 4 mothers, Mrs. Luo, mother and son were ill in bed. They were not given food for 10 days, and 3 of them died of starvation. Li Youcheng, a member of the Datong management district, was afraid that he would skip his meal and go to work with illness. He fell ill and was carried back to the field. Among the 43 members of the Second Squadron of the Third District of Daozuo Commune in Qionglai County, 40 households were beaten by Wang Qisong, the director of the district. Among them, the whole family of 6 households was beaten. A 12-year-old girl, Wang Mulin, was so hungry that she picked up beans to eat. She was kicked from the house by Wang to the outside, and thrown to the ridge of the field to die. Member Wang Qiqing stole two handfuls of soybeans to satisfy his hunger, and was beaten and hanged because of fear. Later, according to the investigation by the working group, only 5 people were directly beaten to death by Wang Qisong, 6 people died within 1 to 2 months after the beating, 11 people died after 3 months, and 2 people were disabled by the beating.

From December 1959 to April 1960, Xu Jianmin, director of the canteen office of Chunhua Management District of Chengxi Commune in Dianjiang County, Sichuan, hanged and beat 18 commune members. Xu Wenpu ate two sweet potatoes and died five days after being hanged by Xu Jianmin. This management area also organized a reform-through-labor team, which worked night shifts every night. Chen Suhua and his wife were both sent to a labor camp. Once, they secretly went home to feed their children medicine. After being discovered by the cadres, they dragged them back to the labor camp by their hair. Yang Cimin, a 50-year-old female member of the 14th Management District of Gaofeng Commune in Rongchang County, was suspected of stealing chickens. Yang was still moaning and struggling when he was about to be buried, but he was still buried.

The "difficult road to Sichuan" in and out of Sichuan, coupled with the fact that the authorities strictly guarded against going out to flee famine, was one of the reasons why a large number of people died of starvation in Sichuan during the Great Leap Forward. At that time, there was only one railway to enter and leave Sichuan, the Baocheng Line. Sichuan stipulated that you must have a certificate to buy a train ticket out of Sichuan. Due to the strict control of "blind flow" in various places, few ordinary people can issue a "certificate" to go out. Many hungry people who want to escape from Sichuan but can't buy a train ticket do everything possible to get on the train, but it is inevitable. The link was caught "currently". Some people walked along the railway from Mianyang and other places, walked through Jiangyou, Guangyuan, and Lueyang, drilled tunnels, and crossed the Qinling Mountains.

Almost out of the woods. Summer is an unpredictable season, with clear skies for a while and dark clouds for a while. There is only one thunderclap and it will rain cats and dogs immediately.

Li Tiandao looked up at the layer upon layer of dark clouds, and said to He Jiafu and Nanshan Yun:

Totalitarian rule hides evil and promotes good, and covers up wrongdoing. There is no supervisory force, no error correction mechanism, and it is common for bad people to dominate and good people to punish. In 1959, Liu En, the head of propaganda of the Ya'an Prefectural Committee, went to Yingjing to investigate the situation of the starving dead and wrote a report, and was labeled as a "three antis". These whole-person incidents, especially the large-scale population genocide in Sichuan, were directly carried out by the Sichuan king Li Jingquan, who worked for tigers, but the black hands behind him were the initiators and enforcers of the Great Leap Forward, who claimed to be a hundred times more powerful than Qin Shihuang The last emperor of China; so that Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang, Yang Shangkun and other party and state officials, who wanted to protect Liao Bokang and other party members who reported the real situation in Sichuan to them, were powerless and useless.

At this time, there was no light between the sky and the earth, the lightning intersected, and the thunder was deafening. It seemed that thousands of troops and horses were crushing past, and it was like a flood roaring, rushing endlessly, like the sky and the earth collapsing, and the momentum was terrifying.

Li Tiandao, He Jiafu, and Nanshan Yun were involved in the storm.