Mao's Great Famine Analysis

China is one of the world’s oldest standing civilizations to date. Over the course of centuries the country has adapted and changed according to the times, and so has the the nation’s literature. Chinese literature dates all the way back to 21 B.C.E, and during that time period chinese literature centered around confucianism and folklore. Literature took a sporadic toll when Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China came to power. Before the rise of the communist party, China was under the rule of the nationalist Kuomintang government. The corrupt and inefficient orders of the nationalist party gave access to the communist party to gain popularity amongst the chinese. In the later years to come, the nationalist party and the communist party
Others tried to survive off of human flesh and resorted to cannibalism, and lastly some decided to take their own lives and end their own suffering. At the time the chinese were unaware of the impact that Mao Zedong would have and by the time they did they could not escape. In Frank Dikotter’s, Mao’s Great Famine, the author reveals the true horrors of Great Leap Forward stating that“...even as every promise was broken, the party kept on gaining followers. Many were idealists, some were opportunists, others thugs. They displayed astonishing faith and almost fanatical conviction, sometimes even after they themselves had ended up being devoured by the party machinery (Dikotter). Incited by fear and deceived by Mao’s propaganda many people could not oppose the Communist Party, and they continued to be loyal to their leader. By the time people started to understand the power of the Communist Party, it was too late for them to turn back around or rather they never even had that option. Initially Mao Zedong used propaganda to gain his followers and grow the Communist Party, and as his following grew he turned to extreme violence and starvation as a “...weapon to punish those who could not keep up with the work routine demanded of them” (Fenby). Every person was expected to obey by the rules of the Communist Party and those who refused were executed. In Dikotter’s book the author does not simply
Born amidst the rise of the People’s Republic Yu Jian experienced first hand the impact the communist party had on China. A childhood incident left Yu Jian with impaired hearing, and when the Cultural Revolution blew up in China his parents, who were intellectuals were sent off to a reeducation camp. At that time Yu Jian was twelve years old and his schooling had been interrupted and he was forced to work at a factory. It was there he developed a passion for poetry and literature. After the death of Mao Zedong, Yu Jian returned back to school and started to write his own poetry. One of his works titled “Two or Three Things From the Past” contains lyrics that depict what life may have been like for a child growing up under the control of the Communist Party. The poem starts of with these lyrics, “So hot then/red trucks loaded with/adults’ burning tongues/forward forward again/disappearing down to the core of/ resolve” Yu Jian is presumably describing the landscape of his neighborhood. Judging by the context the red trucks were most likely the same trucks that Yu Jian’s parents were hauled away on to reeducation camps. Poetry became a big breakthrough during this time period because many people could not verbally voice their opinions they had to resort to literature. However, these types of literature were not published till after the death of Mao Zedong. Any type of literature