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Ye Pingmu (b.1932) is a resident of Zhaixia Village, Pengzhai Town, Heping County, Heyuan City, Guangdong Province. In his 20s, Ye joined the local commune and started to farming collectively. Ye described that experience as like being held in a cage pig—they were not allowed to do anything else. During the Famine, they did not have rice, so Ye ate lots of sweet potatoes. In the 1960s, Ye's grandfather, together with some other aged people, were starved to death.

Ye Qing (b.1946) recollects that the backyard furnace movement and three years of natural disaster resulted in the famine. People were forced to leave their village to beg.

autobiography excerpts

Ye Rijin (b.1938) is a resident of Zhaixia Village, Pengzhai Town, Heping County, Heyuan City, Guangdong Province. After the communization, the commune claimed that they had a harvest of 100 thousand jin per acre. Many people died of hunger. For instance, Ye Zuoxing went to the eating hall to fetch porridge for his mother, but could not help eating all of it on his way home. His mother died afterwards. People ate all kinds of famine foods and either died of sickness or starvation. Since Ye went to the mining field to work and sold Chinese pancakes on the street, he did not suffer much hunger. During the Cultural Revolution, Ye was a Red Guard. He also remembers that many educated youths from the city came to live with the villagers. The transcript of this interview has been translated into English.

Promotional materials

Synopsis of the play based on the original by Federico Garcia Lorca.