{"id":136808,"date":"2012-05-24T23:21:25","date_gmt":"2012-05-25T06:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=136808"},"modified":"2012-05-24T23:22:36","modified_gmt":"2012-05-25T06:22:36","slug":"documenting-chinas-lost-history-of-famine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/05\/documenting-chinas-lost-history-of-famine\/","title":{"rendered":"Documenting China’s Lost History of Famine"},"content":{"rendered":"

The famine that resulted at least partially from Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward movement killed tens of millions of people<\/a>, yet there has never been a full accounting of the tragedy and it is not openly discussed in textbooks or other public forums in China. Now, a Chinese documentary maker is sending young colleagues around China to record the histories of people who lived through the so-called “years of hardship.” The BBC reports<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nArmed with video cameras, Mr Wu’s researchers have already travelled to 50 villages in 10 provinces across China.<\/p>\n

So far they have collected more than 600 memories from the famine, the result of a disastrous political campaign launched by Mao Zedong.<\/p>\n

The Great Leap Forward was supposed to propel China into a new age of communism and plenty – but it failed spectacularly.<\/p>\n

Agriculture was disrupted as private property was abolished and people were forced into supposedly self-sufficient communes.<\/p>\n

Interviews for this new project reveal that even though the famine happened a long time ago – between late 1958 and 1962 – memories are still sharp.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read more about the Great Leap Forward <\/a>via CDT, including efforts by Chinese historian Yang Jisheng<\/a> and Dutch historian Frank Dik\u00f6tter <\/a>to document this period of history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The famine that resulted at least partially from Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward movement killed tens of millions of people, yet there has never been a full accounting of the tragedy and it is not openly discussed in textbooks or other public forums in China. Now, a Chinese documentary maker is sending young colleagues around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14744,14745,14746,100,5],"tags":[7576,437,5907,3640],"class_list":["post-136808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","category-society","tag-famine","tag-great-leap-forward","tag-mao-zedong","tag-prc-history","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\nDocumenting China's Lost History of Famine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/05\/documenting-chinas-lost-history-of-famine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Documenting China's Lost History of Famine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The famine that resulted at least partially from Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward movement killed tens of millions of people, yet there has never been a full accounting of the tragedy and it is not openly discussed in textbooks or other public forums in China. 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