Reddit reviews Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962

First of all, let's try to be academic. That means no name calling. Also random capitalization doesn't do much.

Anyhow.

I am not an expert, but I could link to experts (although searching for "Great Chinese Famine" in JSTOR gives you a lot of stuff!)

Here is one nice link

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41447786

Have also heard go things about this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Tombstone-Great-Chinese-Famine-1958-1962/dp/0374533997


My understanding is mostly of Mao forcing people away from agricultural production, and towards iron, among other things. Also the very famous genocide of all of the birds, which resulted in a glut of pests that killed crops (a mainstay ecological case!). Also like the Irish famine, the government forced exports, which is obviously horrible.

Also: central planning lol

While I appreciate your study of primary sources, I would like to bring this back to my original post. China, like Turkey, has a habit of covering things up, and a vested interest in lying. Just try researching the Tiananmen Square Massacre! So any primary source documents (especially ones from the party and ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY anything released for public consumption) is often highly inaccurate.

A big part of historical analysis is evaluating sources for their accuracy, their message, their audience, etc. Although i'm sure you know this, it is important to keep in mind.

This book is banned in China.

https://www.amazon.com/Tombstone-Great-Chinese-Famine-1958-1962/dp/0374533997/

Why do you think that is?

Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 by Yang Jisheng

Not about imprisonment, but about man-made famine. In composition very similar to Gulag Archipelago.

Took 20 years to research and write in China, banned in China. 1,208 pages in the original Chinese, 656 pages in abridged English version.

During the great Chinese famine, China did the opposite of this. They would send farmers to dig canals and trenches, or to go work in steel mills, resulting in a loss of food production.

This will not have a positive effect. Sending people that have no knowledge of farming to work farms will be minimally efficient. While also reducing the efficiency of the industries that these people already have a specific skill set for. Even if the government instructs people on how to work the farms, odds are the government will not give correct instructions. And once again I refer back to the Great Chinese famine, where the government created the inefficiencies.

This is what happened in China, "ohh you have this crop growing food, well this isn't the crop we wanted. Plow the field again and plant this instead." Then they act surprised when no food grows.

See this book, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962

The Mao system resulted in a genocide of a generation of peasants.

Red Sorghum by Mo Yan - brutal Marquez-esque magical realism during WWII-era China.

Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado - a gang of children and adolescents run rampant on the streets of Bahia, Brazil.

Paprika by Yasutaka Tsutsui - a really odd novel involving machines that can invade people's dreams. Very weird and fun.

Tombstone by Yeng Jisheng - the most thorough and brutal account you'll ever read of the Chinese Famine of 1958-62. Much talk of cannibalism and insect-nutrition charts.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Matsuo Basho - it's both a collection of haiku by one of the medium's acknowledged masters and an idiosyncratic travel narrative of 1600s Japan.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - a great first Marquez to recommend to people who don't yet want to take the One Hundred Years of Solitude plunge.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami - one of the few books I've read more than twice.

The Notebook, The Proof, and The Third Lie by Agota Kristof - a trilogy of short novels about distance and isolation in Europe during and after World War II. The three books form a narrative that contradicts itself, doubles back and retells events, and generally messes with your head until you're not sure what to believe.

Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino - my favorite of Calvino's works. This is a collection of short stories about and narrated by heavenly bodies, mathematical formulae, supreme beings. They're basically cosmic fairy tales.

As a Sinology graduate, I thoroughly recommend anything by Frank Dikotter.

He's essentially one of the leading authorities on the PRC's history.

Another recommendation would be Yang Jisheng's excellent investigative work, "Tombstone": https://www.amazon.com/Tombstone-Great-Chinese-Famine-1958-1962/dp/0374533997

So far, the only non-horrifically biased media work that I can think of that portrays China during WWII would be 《南京！南京！》by Lu Chuan.

>https://www.amazon.com/Tombstone-Great-Chinese-Famine-1958-1962/dp/0374533997/

Yes, you can think that those people die because ccp's awful policies Indirectly. And how do you know that ccp were willingly and actively trying to purge those people? And to those murderers who knowingly and consciously kill iraqis, what do you wanna say to them? if you already wanted to grill ccp on the fireplace, what will you do to those US soldiers and their commanders?

And that’s why I know you don’t have any idea about communist China,whether past or present one.If you do care about China instead of using it as a promotion of your ideology,you could read tombstone or live a happy life in your imaginary world.