Times were lean over the coming months, but even I didn’t know quite how lean they were. If I visited a chicken farm, for example, Party officials would collect all the nearby chickens to make it seem as if there were no problems. Grain harvests were supplemented by the addition of small rocks to the sacks, falsely increasing their weight. Soon we were all biting our bread with great care, trying to avoid chipping our teeth on any pebbles that had snuck through.
