After the disaster in Dingxi Prefecture, which was the hardest-hit area of Gansu Province during the 1958-1960 famine, a children's welfare institution was urgently set up in Dingxi Prefecture to take in hundreds of orphans. During the same period, children's welfare centers or "kindergartens" were set up in all counties and towns in Dingxi Prefecture, as well as in the people's communes in the hardest-hit counties. These children's welfare centers, large and small, housed about 5,000 orphans. On the basis of faithful historical facts and statements by the parties concerned, this book brings tragic scenes of starvation and death before people's eyes using straightforward description, documentary language, and a down-to-earth tone of voice.
The author of this article, Chen Feng, was born in 1962. His hometown is Huang Sichong, Sanjia Brigade, Bainong Commune, Feidong County, Anhui Province. According to his records, in the winter of 1959 to the spring of 1960 during the Great Famine, his grandfather, grandmother, grandfather, grandmother's relatives and relatives, and countless members of his extended family and village, 57 people died of starvation.
