In the spring of 1959, Yang Jisheng, then an 18-year-old
scholarship student at a boarding school in China's Hubei Province, got an
unexpected visit from a childhood friend. "Your father is starving to death!"
the friend told him. "Hurry back, and take some rice if you can." Mr. Yang's father would die within three days. He was one of the 36 million Chinese who
succumbed to famine between 1958 and 1962. Read more
