Hiding in Words

Reading Chronicle of Dingxi Orphanage

Chronicle of Dingxi Orphanage, Chinese book, written by Yang Xianhui / 定西孤儿院纪事，杨显惠

Like most tragic events in Chinese history, the Great Famine that happened between 1958 and 1961 in this country is not mostly forgotten. If anyone still remember sad old stories like famine, violence in the Cultural Revolution or careless killing of “capitalist liberals” in the early 1980’s, the government will try its best to persuade it didn’t do anything wrong — if there was indeed any wrong, the government always has a good excuse.

The Great Famine is officially called “Three Years of Natural Disasters”, “Three Years of Difficulties”. Although it is proven that there wasn’t widespread natural disasters, and all the difficulties happened only because wrong industrial & agricultural policies from the Great Leap Forward.

If in Tombstone (墓碑), senior journalist of State news agency Yang Jisheng (杨继绳) gave an elaborate, comprehensive and rather academic study on the Great Famine, Yang Xianhui’s (杨显惠) narration in this book is more individual. In his calm narration, Yang Xianhui let the characters recount their own stories in a truthful and forceful way. The excruciating experiences of starvation, death and cannibalism can only be understood more deeply in such a style.

Whole villages of people died of starvation. Some survived on grass, barks. And yes, some ate their children to survive. How could such horrible situation ever come on this Earth?

In the 5-thousand year long Chinese history, such terrible famine would about violent uprising, then a new dynasty. But in the three years of famine, and after that, the hungry people of this People’s Republic didn’t know what the hell is really going on in their country. They knew nother and were always piously worshiping Red Sun Chairman Mao, they were always obsessed with the fantasy of another world war.

This government doesn’t want to be responsible for anything wrongdoing that itself has heartlessly done. The Communist Party tend to call the Great Famine a natural disaster, and the Cultural Revolution a political catastrophe. The trick here is no one is actually responsible for disasters and catastrophes. Truth is the real bad guy will never take any responsibility in this country.

What if any tragedy happen today? Without freedom of the media, without allowing people to talk about whatever is really going on, without any restraint of irresponsible government behavior, similar thing will take place for another time, maybe in a smaller scale. Think about SARS, government cover-up only made more damage. In the end an unlucky guy was picked as scape-goat (later that guy was quietly promoted). Let’s see what happens in the government if avian flu become a big problem.