The ears of the grain will smash his head

Some people perceive that the absurdness in the era of Chairman Mao is exaggerated by critics. The fact, however, is that the criticisms of Mao, either from the perspective of breadth and depth, of specifics in particular, or from individual empirical study, are far from enough. As to the absurdness in the absurd era, the most incisive castigation is not criticism based on contentless slogans, but on evidences sufficient to demonstrate its preposterousness.

While I don’t agree with many of Li Ao’s claims after Taiwan’s realization of democracy, I do think one of his words is conducive in comprehending the hardships in China after 1949, that is, “I prove you are an asshole instead of cursing you.” It is far more convincing to prove the falsehood and nonsense of the governmental ideology using facts based on detailed materials and empirical methods than simply infuriated words.

The Anti-right struggle in 1957 and the Great Leap Forward (GLF) in 1958 were the direct drivers of three years famine (which should actually be five years from 1958 to 1962); anti-right struggle had killed off the critics and thus paved the way for the lies in GLF in 1958. Once the rational voices had been erased, craziness started flooding; omnipresent making of iron and steel, national folk-song activity, bombastic amount of production etc., combining together, drove the whole society into insanity and fever collectively.

Concerning the national folk-song movement, there should be professional researches on, say, how the competition of folk songs and poetries was initiated and organized; a statistical collection of the authors that participated in; or the statistics of the publishers then as well as the total amount of printing (as complete as including mimeograph and letterpress). All these fundamental researches could provide good grounds for analyzing the role folk-song movement played in the propagandizing and fostering of GLF, as well as in apotheosizing of Mao (even could help make clearer the impact of such apotheosization on the cultural revolution, thereby contributing to restoration of the history. To my knowledge, however, it seems no such research comes out so far; our ambiguous perception of the government is due in part to such insufficient research.

People started to die in 1958 due to starvation, which deteriorated into famine in a large scale in 1959, but the government still kept lying, like the sing orioles and darting swallows. In China, fortunately, we have Mr. Yang Jishen’s book Tombstone exclusively documenting the great famine; outside China, we have Jasper Becker’s Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine. The work done by Backer encompasses the relation and comparison of Mao’s famine with that of Ukraine under governance of Soviet Union, it also covers the situation in Tibetan-inhabited areas. All these are the places that the work of Mr. Yang is relatively weak at, it is recommended, therefore, to refer to both of them so as to grasp a complete picture.

In the years of 1958, especially 1950, the phenomenon of people killed by starvation became very normal, yet the government still exalted the prosperity and printed lots of eulogistic things. The book “1958 poetry”, which is similar to poet yearbook, is nothing but a collection of goose-raising pufferies that were prevalent across the whole country with many races taking part in.

Xu Chi wrote in the preview of 1958 Poetry (August, 1958, 5500 copies printed) that “Everywhere becomes the sea of poems. China has been a country of poems. The poems written by workers, peasants and soldiers are shining brightly. Many factories or plants have emerged with uncountable poems; everywhere turns into an area million-poem; and many military camps are one with million poems.”

“Almost in every county,” he went on, “from the local governors to the people, everyone gets down to writing; everywhere a folk-song fair is held. Competition of poems is so pervasive that all provinces have to do it through wireless radio. Poetries, collection of poems and journals of poems and songs, published in forms of mimeograph and letterpress, are countless. The poems are created on streets, sculptured on stones, posted in plants, building sites and furnaces. Handouts of poems are flying everywhere across the whole country.

“The advent of communes is a big event that calls the global attentions and praises, and also a spectacular theme of many poems.” Accordingly, we had a whole list of people who, then, were professional in singing the praises of the government, to name but a few, Guo Moruo, Li Jishen, Li Ying, Guo Xiaochuan, Yuan Shuipa, Yuan Ying, Zang Kejia, Li Guangtian, Deng Tuo, Guang Weiran, Chen Qitong, He Jingzhi, Li Ji and Xu Chi. Under such crazy circumstance, it is not stunning that such threatening poems like The ears of the grain will smash his head emerged, shown below, in the province of Gan Su in which the amount of death was only third to Sichuan and Henan,

The ears of the grain will smash his head
--Qing Guangyuan, Gan Su province
Streams of clearness flowing day and night,
Crops greening in commune,
Who dare say there is no harvesting of food,
The ears of the grain will smash his head.