The almost crazy dream of " running into Communism " finally became the nightmare of the people of Dafutun due to the economic weakness in their bones. In the whimsical farce, the extremely limited people and the food that they relied on to survive were exhausted. It was in the winter of that year that the disaster of hunger fell on the head of Dafutun.
The economic foundation of Dafutun, which produced two to three hundred catties of grain per mu, had always been to sustain itself with half a year's worth of rice bran and vegetables. How long could it last if it was allowed to eat freely now? After running out of food, how were they going to live the rest of their lives? Not many people thought about it. Perhaps it was useless even if they thought about it.
Soon, there were no more white steamed buns in the dining hall. Then, there was the kaoliang and cornmeal. They were barely able to provide porridge once a day. Then, there were only carrots that were transported from other places for relief.
It was a cold morning. Before dawn, Mother pushed and hit us brothers awake from our dreams. In a daze, we rushed to the cafeteria to grab breakfast. If we were late, we would starve. When I saw that there were still carrots in the steamer, my stomach began to churn and I felt disgusted.
In the spring, the cafeteria was disbanded, and people fell from the paradise of their dreams back to the hell of hunger. Without food, the people relied on elm (elm flowers, leaves, and bark), locust flowers (slightly poisonous), willow leaves, and sowthistle flowers to survive. Before the elm trees could grow leaves, the hungry people had already stripped off the elm bark to satisfy their hunger.
Every day after school, my brother and I would go to the willow forest in the big ditch to the west of the village to stroke the willow leaves. Mother would first put the willow leaves in the pot to boil, then scoop them out twice with cold water to remove the bitter taste in the leaves, then chop them up, mix them with a little cornmeal, knead them into balls, and steam them. The first few days of eating willow leaves were so bitter that it was hard to swallow. After eating them for a few days, he got used to it and it was not as bitter as it was at the beginning.
The earthen steel furnace at the entrance of the village was like a grave, silently lying there. There were no sparks in the furnace, and it had lost the high-spirited laughter of the people in front of the red fire.
The hoes and iron pots that were collected by every household were piled up in the open space around the furnace, like dried cow dung that had been pulled down by herds of cattle.
Rows of large water tanks used to boil fertilizer had been smashed by someone. Shards of tiles were scattered everywhere in the fields, as if they were the remains of grave robbers.
People who had been tortured by hunger for a whole spring were counting on the early summer corn to help them. However, misfortune never came alone. When the new corn variety grew into the corn cob, people realized that there were no corn seeds on the cob, causing a total corn harvest. The people had no choice but to pull the empty cobs back to fill their stomachs.
Hunger destroyed people's health. People began to have swollen faces, swollen legs, and even swollen bodies. People in the village began to die of hunger.
There was an old man in the west of the village. In order to prevent the soybeans he ate from being digested, he vomited them, washed them, and then ate them. As a result, he was poisoned to death by the method of recycling food that he invented.
It was a bit strange to say that in such a famine year, the people of the doctor village still had a certain reverence for nature. Even if they starved to death, there were some things that they would not eat. If there was a famine like that again, people would probably fight for food.
The Great Leap Forward established pig farms, and there was nothing to feed the pigs during the famine. The pigs starved to death one after another, and the starved pigs were thrown on the roadside, but no one picked them up to eat.
Mother couldn't bear to see us starve, so she secretly picked one up and hid it in the hole. However, she was afraid of some rules and didn't dare to eat it in the end, so she secretly threw it away.
As the famine continued, more and more people in the village starved to death. Some families did not have the strength to dig holes and bury people, so they used a roll of rags to sweep them up and bury them in the wild. Some corpses were thrown into the wild, and groups of wild dogs tore and ate the exposed corpses. They even dragged the corpses of children everywhere.
Not long after, rabies broke out in the village. People said that dogs went crazy after eating dead people's meat. To make things worse, people in the village really began to die of rabies.
The team organized the militia to kill the dogs. The dogs that were caught were hung on trees with ropes and strangled to death. To prevent rabies from spreading, the strangled dogs were buried outside the village. The hungry people secretly dug up the buried dogs in the middle of the night to eat. During the day, the militia who participated in the dog hunting would lead the people to dig up the corpses of the dogs in the wild at night.
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