1960, Anhui Province, Lixin County (利辛縣), People’s Republic of China

As time approached the spring festival by the chains of days and the sequence of hours, her father was the first one to die from starvation.

Not so much as being starved to death as killed from exhaustion.

Despite of having almost nothing to eat, he still had to work over 16 hours a day in the rice field, plowing like an ox, pulling carts loaded 10 times his own weight.

His wife used straw mats roll up his corpse.

His skin covered his bones like a sheet, not an ounce of fat left between the bone and the skin.

She dragged the macabre bundle to the corner of the living room, put common reeds on top, and daily she went to the commune’s dining hall and used his meal ticket to bring in a meager portion of rice porridge back to the family. During Mao Zedong’s reign, all private property was abolished. In fact, money was rendered useless. Everyone had to use tickets to exchange for their portion of food, clothing, and other household items.

At night, she was still hungry, and the hunger kept her awake. She got up, grabbed the kitchen’s meat cleaver, and sliced off some of the rotten flesh from her husband’s corpse, boiled it in the cauldron and ate.

All the children around the neighborhood walked with swollen bellies, and when the morning came, as they sat in the sun, the cruel sun that never ceased its endless shining, their bodies angular and sharp, like walking cadavers. Daily a few of them starved to death, and it was common.

The widow had two children, a daughter and a son, and everyday in addition to her dead husband’s rice porridge, they only collect a few sweet yams. The daughter fought with the son for the last remaining piece of yam, and the widow knew that if this continued, both of them would eventually starve to death. So she went out to the wilderness, with a shovel dug a shallow ditch, not enough for adults but deep enough that children couldn’t crawl out. And when night came, as the girl slept, she carried her and walked into the wilderness.

As the widow walked, carrying her daughter on her back, the daughter woke up and asked, “Mommy, where are we going?” The widow replied, “to find your papa.”

The daughter did not cry. She crawled into the shallow ditch. She lay uncomplaining underground and she was sucking feebly at her thumb. Her little hollowed face looking upward toward the sky, her little sunken blue lips like a toothless old woman’s lips, and hollow black eyes reflecting moonlight in the darkness, peering out at her mom.

She started crying as she felt dirt being poured on her head. The agony of her wail filled up the silent night, and she yelped, “Mommy, I never take my brother’s food anymore.” The widow cried but silently continued. She used the shovel to toss more soil downward, until her daughter’s cry could no longer be heard.

~ Excerpt from China’s Forbidden History: The Great Famine and Cultural Revolution