Great Leap Forward

THE ARTICLE:

“Mao’s Great Leap to Famine”

by Frank Dikotter

December 16, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/opinion/16iht-eddikotter16.html

THE GIST:

Rather than improving China, Mao's Great Leap Forward resulted in millions of deaths.  From about 1958 to 1961, the GLF aimed to transform China from an agrarian economy to an industrial one.  To do so, the Communist Party outlawed private farming and greatly restricted the lives of rural Chinese, leading ultimately to a devastating famine.  Frank Dikotter, author of "Mao's Great Famine," traveled to China and studied newly available records leading him to conclude that the GLF claimed about 45 million lives.  In his studies, Dikotter read horrific first-hand accounts of GLF policies: a man's ear chopped off for digging up a potato, a father forced to bury his son alive after the child stole a handful of grain, a brother killing and then eating his own brother, etc.  

THE POEM:

Great Leap Forward

knife chops down
after a potato is dug free
an ear is planted in the ground
to blossom as a warning tree

in the grainless earth
a father buries his breathing son
the anti-birth
a fate he can't outrun

a brother stabs his twin
in the bent spine
covers the face of his kin
while he eats him off the vine

starving mothers can barely weep
hungry bodies cannot leap