Liu Shaoqi visits Hunan, 1961.

Since the food shortages caused by the 1958 Great Leap Backward were such a major trauma for the people we meet during fieldwork, I’ve just added a tag in the sidebar for famine. See also the Maoism tag.

Indeed, this was no mere “three years of difficulty”: food shortages began even before the Leap, and continued throughout the Cultural Revolution right until the collapse of the commune system in the late 1970s.

Among the main articles are:

• Cultural Revolutions
• Gansu: connecting social trauma and expressive culture
• Ukraine and China (both these posts list some of the main sources; and for more on Ukraine, see under Life behind the Iron Curtain: a roundup)
• Blind minstrels of Ukraine
• The Kazakh famine
• Guo Yuhua‘s distressing ethnography of a Shaanbei village
• China: commemorating trauma
• The temple of memories
• China: memory, music, society
• Clues from Hunan
• Ian Johnson’s major book Sparks includes sections on the brave students who sought to remedy the famine in Gansu.

The famine also features in many of the pages under Local ritual; it’s a theme of my work on Gaoluo (see e.g. A tribute to two local ritual leaders) and the Li family Daoists. Indeed, while there are many fine studies dedicated to the subject, it should be a recurring theme in coverage of local society, expressive culture, and people’s lives.

North Xinzhuang, Beijing suburbs 1959.