MCLC: Venerating Mao where famine remains a memory

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Venerating Mao where famine remains a memory
Source: Sinosphere, NYT (1/13/16)
Venerating Mao, Even Where Famine Remains a Memory
点击查看本文中文版 Read in Chinese
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW
ZHUSHIGANG, China — Only the orange of thousands of freshly dug carrots, washed in icy water and packed for delivery by village women, brightened this fog-draped village last Friday, one day after the authorities razed a golden statue of Mao Zedong erected by local admirers that had towered over the dun fields.
A few morsels of root vegetables such as carrots, a local staple along with potatoes, radishes, peanuts and corn, may have saved the life of Yang Nainai, or Granny Yang, during the famine precipitated by Mao’s Great Leap Forward in 1958 to 1962. It devastated Tongxu County, in the eastern plains of Henan Province, where Zhushigang is, hitting especially hard in the first two years, she said.
Ms. Yang, who did not volunteer her given name, was sitting with three generations of family members around a fire of dried corn cobs and peanut shells in Xiaoshuanggou, the village next to Zhushigang. Her face crumpled as she talked about the hunger that followed Mao’s agricultural collectivization and industrialization campaign, when the local state-run canteen distributed two small meals a day.
“Countless people starved to death. They starved from here all the way to Luoyang,” more than 125 miles to the west, said Ms. Yang, 75, her gold hoop earrings swinging beneath a purply-black woolen hat.
Historians say at least 30 million people succumbed to famine across China in those years, when private agriculture was forbidden. As part of the drive to speed up economic development, iron cooking and farm implements were ordered melted down to make steel for industry and the army, Ms. Yang said. Both her parents starved to death. An uncle of hers ate his leather belt, she recalled.
“The country was just liberated, and poor,” she said, referring to Mao’s 1949 Communist revolution. “We had a little bit of iron and had to hand it in.”
Toddlers got a small chunk of steamed cornbread at mealtime, she said, pointing to her 1-year-old grandson. Thirteen-year-olds got half a piece, Ms. Yang said. Adults got one piece with some vegetable inside.
“When there was a meal, adults wouldn’t eat and would save it instead for their children,” she said. “The adults’ bodies were all swollen with hunger. Fluid came out of their swollen body parts, and the skin on their hands peeled off.”
Her father left for Luoyang to beg for yams for his family. Unlike eastern Henan, a plain coursed through by the Yellow River that is prone to flooding and, historically, famine, Luoyang is on high ground.
“They had yams there, a few yams,” she said.
Four years after her father’s death — Ms. Yang is unsure when that occurred — “his bones came home,” carried back by a fellow villager, she said.
Despite the horror of those years, like many villagers here, Ms. Yang keeps a large portrait of Mao above the family shrine, along with figurines of the goddess of mercy, Guan Yin, and the 12th-century general Yue Fei, a Henan native.
“He’s become like a god to us,” she said of Mao. “He won the world for the people.”
Historians explain the puzzle of enduring loyalty to Mao by pointing to decades of political indoctrination, and the generally hard times that persisted into the early years of the People’s Republic. Memories of an earlier famine here, in 1942, mingle with the later one, they say.
In political meetings to “remember bitterness and consider sweetness,” the story of the earlier hunger “was repeated over and over again,” said Zhou Xun, a historian at the University of Essex.
“The Great Leap Forward famine was never mentioned,” Ms. Zhou said. “Mao also came into the picture as the new power who ultimately ended the misery. In this way Mao became the new god who oversaw their fortune. In reality, misfortune.”
In Tongxu County, incomes remain low. A family earning about $8,400 a year is doing well.
Managers of the carrot business here said prices for the vegetable had fallen for two years in a row.
But “life today is a pot of honey compared to then,” Ms. Yang said.
And though Ms. Yang expressed regret that the statue was knocked down, her son, who gave only his surname, Wang, said feelings were mixed.
“I don’t think everyone around here likes Mao,” he said.
Follow Didi Kirsten Tatlow on Twitter @dktatlow.
by denton.2 at osu.edu on January 15, 2016
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