Venerating Mao, Even Where Famine Remains a Memory

Only the orange of thousands of freshly dug carrots, washed in icy water and packed for delivery by village women, brightened this fog-draped village last Friday, one day after the authorities razed a golden statue of Mao Zedong erected by local admirers that had towered over the dun fields. A few morsels of root vegetables such as carrots, a local staple along with potatoes, radishes, peanuts and corn, may have saved the life of Yang Nainai, or Granny Yang, during the famine precipitated by Mao’s Great Leap Forward in 1958 to 1962. It devastated Tongxu County, in the eastern plains of Henan Province, where Zhushigang is, hitting especially hard in the first two years, she said. Read more