Wake up（148）

 

148

 

He Jiafu and Li Tiandao met again, and He Jiafu remembered that Li Tiandao had told him about the past when they first met.

He Jiafu asked his grandson Nanshan Yun to drag out the old wooden box from under the bed. From the old newspapers and magazines stored in the old wooden box, He Jiafu took out an old newspaper that reported the Xinyang incident.

He Jiafu became uneasy again, and he said to Li Tiandao in a distraught manner, after we met last time, I accidentally collected this old newspaper, you might as well take a look.

Li Tiandao picked up the yellowed old newspaper and read it.

The Xinyang Incident refers to the events that occurred in Xinyang Special District of Henan Province from October 1959 to April 1960, including today's Xinyang City and Zhumadian City. At that time, there was a large-scale famine and a large number of farmers starved to death.

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.

In response to the call for the "Great Leap Forward" proposed 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 the Xinyang area; Enter Communism" as the slogan and marched, asking for 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 big 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 and 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 field with a yield of 3,821 catties per mu were reported one after another. On the "People's Daily".

In March 1959, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China ignored the fact that the national grain production had been greatly reduced, and decided at the Shanghai meeting to purchase 135 billion catties of grain nationwide in accordance with the 1958 standard. source. 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 Mao Zedong gathered a large number of Peng Dehuai at the Lushan Conference, 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 the basic living rations from the peasants.

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 (now Zhumadian City) in Xinyang Prefecture, 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[6]. 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.

Li Tiandao put down the yellowed old newspaper and said: At that time, news was blocked and people were prevented from fleeing. As the situation continued to deteriorate, more and more people died of starvation, so that no one buried the bodies, and cannibalism continued to occur. In Gushi County alone, there were 200 cases of cannibalism officially recorded. "Arresting the masses in the name of. The living people began to flee in large numbers in order to survive.

He Jiafu sighed, I still remember the folk song 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.

 

Both old men were caught in painful memories and contemplation.

When the moral forces upon which civilization has been formed lose their potency, its final disintegration is always accomplished by unconscious and barbaric crowds. When it comes to the Xinyang incident, people will always point the finger at those in power. In fact, every political, theological, or social creed that is to take root among grassroots groups must take the form of religion, the form that keeps dangerous discussions out of it. Even those who claim to be atheists have actually been launching a god-making movement. What the group spirit they created most needs is not freedom but obedience. Brainwashed grassroots groups, they are so willing to obey the will of those in power that as long as someone claims to be their master, the grassroots will instinctively obey him. Not only in China, but also in the world. The ignorance and ignorance of the grassroots brought them nothing but slavery and submission.