Jeremy Maddux’s Reviews > Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine > Status Update

'Zeng Xisheng lost his position, and later his life, not for causing the death of so many people but for introducing the reforms which saved many more lives.'

'Sun Yucheng, chief of Zhetang brigade of Banqiao commune, caught a woman stealing and shoved his gun up her vagina.'

Is it that Communism is inherently horrible, or that China itself was inherently horrible? I'm beginning to think the latter.

'He told Chang to bury the old woman before the others returned from working in the fields. Hua said that if she did not do this immediately he would force her to bury her mother in the house when she died. Chang had no choice but to bury her mother alive.'

"At first, the villagers tried to bury their dead in coffins but later, when the wood ran out, the living just wrapped the dead in cotton. Finally there was no cloth left, so at night people mounted guard over buried relatives until the flesh had sufficiently decomposed to prevent others from eating the corpse."

Communism is awesome! I can't wait to see how much necrophagia goes on under Bernie and Cortez's watch!

'In Guangshan county, one woman with three children was caught after she had hidden the corpse of one of them behind the door and then finally, in desperation, had begun to eat it.'

'In the interests of pest control a new campaign to exterminate the ‘four evils’ – birds, rats, insects and flies – was launched in 1958. The whole country was turned out to make a noise, beating drums and pans to prevent sparrows from landing anywhere until they fell down dead with exhaustion.'

I hope China isn't this retarded in modern times!

'A third method was dubbed ‘opening the flower’. The victim was buried in a pit with only his head exposed which was then smashed, laying open his brains.'

I read the words written here, and yet my mind can conjure no images or impressions to match the content described. How could I imagine such cruelty, even vicariously?

'Those categorized as landlords were shot, hanged, beheaded, battered to death, nailed to the walls of buildings or buried alive. Sometimes, in winter, the victim was dressed in a thin cotton garment and water was poured over him while he stood outside in sub-zero temperatures. This method of death was called‘wearing glass clothes’. Burying victims alive in the snow was called ‘refrigeration’.'

‘The famine conditions in this province are heartrending... Dogs feasting on human flesh. Skeletons in thousands to be seen everywhere. As we journeyed over the road, overand over again our chairbearers had to carry us over dead bodies of people who had died on the road. One very sad sight was a poor victim kneeling before an idol shrine – dead.’

Why the hell would you admit to having chairbearers?