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Book
Jin Qiao Lu Man
During the three years of famine from 1959 to 1961, Tongwei's unnatural deaths due to starvation and its related factors amounted to one-third of the county's population. Mr. Zhang Dafa, who worked in Tongwei for many years and later took part in the preparation of the new Tongwei County Record. Published in 2005 through the Dingxi Writers' Association, this is a collection of his many social research reports on the Tongwei issue, "Jinqiao Luwan," which profoundly reveals the tragedy and gravity of the Great Famine, a man-made disaster, within the boundaries of a single county.
Book
Lin Zhao Anthology
The Lin Zhao Anthology contains nearly one hundred of Lin Zhao's works, including essays, poems, commentaries, and news reports written since her middle school years, as well as all of Lin Zhao's manuscripts and letters that were written in prison and later returned to her family. The collection was edited and compiled by Lin Zhao's friends Tan Chanxue (see separate entry) and Ni Jingxiong, and printed into a book on their own. Most of Lin Zhao’s manuscripts written in her blood in prison were typed on computer by Tan Chanxue. This anthology is the most important historical material used by Prof. Lian Xi of Duke University for his research and writing of the book "Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao's China."
Book
Man-Made Disasters: The Great Leap Forward and the Great Famine.
The author of this book, Ding Shu, is a Chinese scholar living in the United States. Published in 1991 by the Hong Kong-based "Nineties Magazine", this book is the first monograph on the Great Famine in China. It has been described by some scholars as the cornerstone of the study of the Great Famine in China. The book was later updated and reprinted. The book starts from the cooperative movement and moves on to the Great Leap Forward, the Great Iron and Steel Refining, the People's Commune, the Satellite Release and the Great Communist Wind; then, it turns to the Lushan Conference against right-leaning as well as the 7,000 People's Congress in 1962. The author collected almost all the information that could be collected at that time and summarized it to describe the situation of this great famine and its causes and consequences. The content of this book is from the website of the Chinese blog "Bianchengsuixiang" (编程随想).
Book
Mao: The Unknown Story
This book presents the dramatic life of Mao Zedong, revealing a wealth of unheard-of facts: why Mao joined the Communist Party, how he came to sit at the top of the Chinese Communist Party, and how he seized China step by step. Writers Jung Chang and her husband Jon Halliday took ten years to complete this book, interviewing hundreds of Mao's relatives and friends, Chinese and foreign informants and witnesses who worked and interacted with Mao as well as dignitaries from various countries.
Purchase link：https://www.amazon.com/Mao-Story-Jung-Chang/dp/0679746323.
Article
Memorandum on "Three Years of Natural Disasters"
The years 1959-1961 were very unusual in the history of disasters in China and the world in the 20th century. Anyone who has experienced it will recall the starvation years and the days when people starved to death everywhere. However, due to official concealment and denial, the number of people who died in this disaster has never been officially announced.
The purpose of Jin Hui's article is to estimate the number of unnatural deaths during the three years of the 1959-1961 disaster in China. Based on public data released by the authoritative National Bureau of Statistics in China Jin concludes that about 40 million people died, which roughly matches studies by foreign scholars, who have estimated up to 45 million.
Article
Peasant resistance in the years of the Great Famine
Even today in China, some people have been trying to deny that there was a great famine in 1960. One of the reasons is: If there was a great famine, why did we not see the peasants' resistance? It is true that historically, in the event of a famine, peasants would loot grain, riot, and even break out in revolt in order to survive, but during the period 1958-1962, due to the special historical conditions, it seems that there is no record of peasants' resistance. But this was not the case. This article collects facts to prove the existence of peasant resistance.
Film and Video
Spark
<i>Spark</i> tells the story of a group of young intellectuals who risked their lives to voice their opinions about the Chinese Communist Party in the 1950s and 1960s. Following the Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1957, many intellectuals were branded as Rightists and banished to work and live in rural China. A group of students from Lanzhou University were among those sent to the countryside. There, they witnessed mass famine which resulted from government policies to collectivize agriculture and force industrialization in rural China. Shocked and angered by the government’s lack of response to the Great Famine, these students banded together to publish <i>Spark</i>, an underground magazine that sought to alert the Chinese population of the unfolding famine. The first issue, printed in 1960, included poems and articles analyzing the root causes of failed policies. However, as the first issue of <i>Spark</i> was mailed and the second issue was edited, many of these students, along with locals who supported the team, were arrested. Some of the key members of the publication were sentenced to life imprisonment and later executed, while others spent decades in labor camps.
In this 2014 documentary, Hu Jie uncovers the stories of the people involved in the publication of <i>Spark</i>. He conducts interviews with former members of the magazine who survived persecution, and also shows footage of the manuscripts of the magazine. A digital copy of the original manuscript of the first volume of <i>Spark</i> is also held on our website.
This film was awarded the Special Jury Prize for Chinese Documentary at the 2014 Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival and the Award of Excellence in the Asian Competition. Later, it won the Independent Spirit Award at the Beijing Independent Film Festival.
Periodicals
Spark, Issue 1
<i>Spark</i> was an underground magazine that appeared in the Tianshui area of Gansu Province in northwestern China during the 1959-1961 Great Famine. The magazine was lost for decades but in the late 1990s began to be republished electronically, becoming the basis of documentary films, essays, and books.
In 1959, the Great Famine was spreading across China. It was witnessed by a group of Lanzhou University students who had been branded as Rightists and sent down to labor in the rural area of Tianshui. They saw countless peasants dying of hunger, and witnessed cannibalism.
Led by Zhang Chunyuan, a history student at Lanzhou University, they founded <i>Spark</i> in the hope of alerting people to the unfolding disaster and analyzing its root causes. The students pooled their money to buy a mimeograph machine, carved their own wax plates, and printed the first issue. The thirty-page publication featured Lin Zhao's long poem, "A Day in Prometheus's Passion." The first issue also featured articles, such as "The Current Situation and Duty," which dissected the tragic situation of society at that time and hoped that the revolution would be initiated by the Communist Party from within.
The students planned to send the magazine to the leaders of the provinces and cities with a view to correcting their mistakes. But before the first issue of Spark was mailed and while the second issue was still being edited, on September 30, 1960, these students in Wushan and Tianshui were arrested, along with dozens of local peasants who knew and supported them. Among them: Zhang Chunyuan was sentenced to life imprisonment and later executed; Du Yinghua, deputy secretary of the Wushan County Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for having interacted with the students, and later executed. Lin Zhao was detained and also executed. Other key members, such as Gu Yan, Tan Chanxue, and Xiang Chengjian, were all sentenced to long years in labor camps.
In the 1990s, Tan Chanxue devoted herself to researching historical information and figures to bring this history to life. She found in her personnel file (<i>dan'an</i>）photographs of the magazine, as well as self-confessions and other evidence used in the students' trial. Eventually, the photos were collated into PDFs, which began to circulate around China.
Editors' note: This site the original handwritten version and a PDF of all the articles from the first issue of <i>Spark</i>. We will also make available transcripts of the essays in Chinese and are searching for volunteers to translate the texts into English. Please contact us if you're interested in helping!
Book
Sparks: A Chronicle of the Rightist Counter-Revolutionary Group at Lanzhou University
During the worst years of the 1960 famine, a group of teachers and students at Lanzhou University decided to publish an underground publication, <i>Spark</i>, to alert Chinese people to the growing disaster and expose the authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party. Only two issues of this underground publication were printed before it was broken up as a counter-revolutionary group case and 43 people were arrested.
The author of this book, Tan Chanxue, was a key participant and helped save the memory of <i>Spark</i> from being lost. Tan was the girlfriend of Zhang Chunyuan, the magazine's founder, and participated in key moments of the magazine's short lifespan. She was sentenced to 14 years in prison, but was later released and rehabilitated, and taught at the Jiuquan Teachers' Training School. In 1982, she was transferred to the Dunhuang Research Institute as an associate researcher, and retired in 1998, settling in Shanghai.
It is largely through Tan's efforts that we know about <i>Spark</i>. She was able to look into her personnel file (<i>dang'an</i>), where she discovered the issues of the magazine, as well as confessions of the people arrested, and even her love letters to Zhang. She photographed this material and later it was turned into PDFs, which circulated around China starting in the late 1990s, helping to inspire books and movies.
Article
Special Collections ｜Famine and Counties (7): The Great Famine in Xili County around 1960
Around 1960, Xili County experienced a famine unprecedented in modern history, resulting in massive population deaths and an exodus, with 44,608 deaths in the county in 1960 alone (43,793 according to provincial statistics). In early 1961, the momentum of population deaths continued to develop, with 525 deaths in January, rising to 729 in February. Along with the massive population deaths, various diseases began to spread. Famine and disease caused a massive exodus of population. From 1958 to 1960 the exodus of population from the county reached 14,241 people. Also due to the death and exodus of population, 170,000 acres of land in the county were left barren, only one commune of Luoyu at that time had more than 20,000 acres.
Article
Special Collections ｜Famine and County (2): Guizhou Meitan Incident
In Meitan County, Guizhou Province, from November 1959 to early April 1960, more than 120,000 people starved to death in five months. The deaths accounted for more than 20 percent of the county's total population and 22 percent of the agricultural population. During the incident, 2,938 families died in the county, 4,737 orphans and widows were left behind, and 4,737 peasants went out to escape. The most tragic and horrible thing to witness was incidents of cannibalism. The author participated in the compilation of "Meitan County Records," read the relevant historical materials, and organized this article to reproduce the real history for future generations to learn from.
Article
Special Collections ｜Famine and the county (5): Haoxian agricultural "satellite" experience collection official repair collection
The former Bo County (now Qiaocheng District, Bozhou City) in Anhui Province is located in the plains of northwest Anhui. During the Great Leap Forward in 1958, under the slogan of "how bold people are, how productive the land is," in Bo County, like everywhere else, generally produced agricultural high-yield "satellites." Afterwards, to show the great achievement, the county party committee instructed the relevant departments to compile a high agricultural yield "satellite" history book - 1958, <i>Bo County Agricultural Yield Experience Collection</i>, that was reported to the press and widely circulated. At that time, I served as deputy director of the county people's committee (government) office and was appointed by the county party committee as one of the reviewers. Now I would like to introduce the incredible circumstances for future generations with the the introduction of the history book *Collection*.
Article
Special collections ｜Famine and the County (6): The "Communist" Dream of Doing Nothing that Wreaks Havoc on the People
During the period of reorganization of the commune, a first-class propagandist from East China was sent to the commune. At a mass meeting of 10,000 people, he proposed that whoever wanted to withdraw from the society, the government would settle accounts with him. There was an account of the losses incurred when the army crossed the border; an account of the disaster relief during the past few years, an account of the poor-peasant cooperative fund when the Agricultural Society was established; and the accounts of the various expenses incurred in sending disaster relief doctors from all over the country and transferring rice and seeds from Yunnan and Sichuan ...... The honest peasants were dumbfounded. Each one privately complained: "The original said that membership was voluntary and withdrawal was free, but now they have changed their minds."
Article
Special Collections ｜Famine and Village (1) Hejiaba in the Three-Year Famine
At the time of its writing, the author of this article, He Xuejia, was a retired high school language teacher in Chongqing County, Sichuan Province. His hometown, Hejiaba, is in Chongqing County, Sichuan Province. The county is located in the Dujiangyan Artesian Irrigation District and is known as the "Land of Heavenly Capital" and the "Upper Five Counties." The author recalls what he witnessed during the Great Leap Forward. At that time, Hejiaba village had 21 families of 130 people. 17 families starved to death, a total of 32 deaths, another person was abandoned, one was given to others, the deaths include the author's own father. As for the four major teams and eight teams in the adjacent village, more than half of the population died. This paper documents some of the deaths from starvation and provides a list of population losses.
Article
Special Collections｜Famine and Village (2) The People's Commune Canteen in Zhoujiawan
"In the second month of the 1961 lunar calendar, the communal canteen was disbanded. The houses and pigsties of the members were compensated and returned. The land was set aside, and the rations were supplied. So we gradually got through the difficult times. Some said that if the communal canteens had been organized for a few more years, I wonder how many more people would have died. "This is the personal experience and oral account of a farmer in Yingshan County, Sichuan Province.
Article
Special Feature｜Famine and County (3): Hao County's Tragedy
This article is taken from six accounts by Mr. Liang Zhiyuan. Mr. Liang Zhiyuan was the deputy director of the Bo County People's Committee (i.e., the government) office during the Great Famine. He also served as the head of the Production and Welfare Section of the County Party Committee's Rural Work Department and the deputy director of the County Party Committee's Living and Welfare Office, where he was responsible for a lot of things. In 2002 and 2005, based on three years of rural work notes and relevant historical information, Mr. Liang Zhiyuan wrote a number of articles describing the Bo County famine, including "A Painful Lesson in History - The Unnatural Deaths of the Rural Population in Bo County." and several other articles. Due to the sensitivity of the matter, these have not been published publicly, and many of these materials are released to the outside world for the first time in this article.
Article
Special Features｜Famine and the County (4): Chronicle of the Great Famine caused by pompous winds
Guangdong Liangyang County was formed in 1958 by the merger of Yangjiang and Yangchun counties. This article describes the ins and outs of excess and famine in Liangyang County.
Article
Specials Collections｜ Famine and the Village (4) The Year of the Raging Left Scourge
The author of this article, whose hometown is the fourth team of Guantianba in Sichuan Province, experienced the Great Famine and witnessed one of his fellow villagers die of starvation. He records how people struggled to survive the famine and records each of the names of those who died of starvation in the hope that future generations will always remember them.