A chronicler of Mao's depredations finds much to worry about in modern China.
In the spring of
1959, Yang Jisheng, then an 18-year-old scholarship student at a
boarding school in China's Hubei Province, got an unexpected visit from a
childhood friend. "Your father is starving to death!" the friend told
him. "Hurry back, and take some rice if you can."
Granted leave from his school, Mr. Yang rushed to his family farm.
"The elm tree in front of our house had been reduced to a barkless
trunk," he recalled, "and even its roots had been dug up." Entering his
home, he found his father "half-reclined on his bed, his eyes sunken and
lifeless, his face gaunt, the skin creased and flaccid . . . I was
shocked with the realization that the term skin and bones referred to something so horrible and cruel."
Mr. Yang's father would die within
three days. Yet it would take years before Mr. Yang learned that what
happened to his father was not an isolated incident. He was one of the
36 million Chinese who succumbed to famine between 1958 and 1962.
It would take years more for him to
realize that the source of all the suffering was not nature: There were
no major droughts or floods in China in the famine years. Rather, the
cause was man, and one man in particular: Mao Zedong, the Great
Helmsman, whose visage still stares down on Beijing's Tiananmen Square
from atop the gates of the Forbidden City.
To read more.....
Great Article and thanks for keeping the link in continuation. I really enjoyed reading your blog. study abroad
ReplyDelete