0:01

Welcome to Stuff you missed in History

0:03

Class from how Stuff Works dot Com

0:12

below, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

0:14

Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. David

0:16

have the second installment in this mini

0:19

series that we are currently

0:21

in the middle of about China under

0:24

the Chairman Mao years Uh.

0:27

This part is on the Great Famine. So

0:29

we're in the middle of the

0:31

mini series and basically

0:33

when the Chinese Communist Party or

0:35

CCP came to power in

0:37

the People's Republic of China. In that's

0:40

actually when the People's Republic was founded. Chairman

0:44

Mao, who was the chair of the party

0:47

said quote, not even one person shall

0:49

die of hunger. And at this point China

0:52

was really already no stranger to famine.

0:55

Tens of millions of people had died in

0:57

famines that had swept across the nation in

0:59

the late eighteen seventies and

1:01

then again between eighteen ninety six and nine

1:03

hundred. There had also been a

1:05

series of serious droughts um

1:08

in the nineteen twenties, and famine

1:11

had followed in the path of the Sino Japanese

1:13

War, but the worst of all

1:15

of these was definitely following the

1:17

Great Leap Forward, which we talked about

1:19

in the previous installment of

1:22

this mini series. This movement

1:24

began in nineteen fifty eight, and

1:26

during the Great Leap Forward, China basically

1:29

shifted its economy entirely

1:31

from one that was based on supply and demand

1:33

to a command economy, also

1:36

known as a planned economy, so the government

1:38

essentially planned what was going to be

1:40

made in where and by whom,

1:42

and all the economic decisions became centralized,

1:45

as well as all the decisions about production.

1:47

This process had really started before the

1:50

Great Leap Forward, but that's when it really

1:52

kicked into high gear. This

1:54

planned economy didn't really

1:56

account for variations in supply and

1:58

demand, or an expected shifts in the

2:01

weather, or differences in labor

2:03

and arable land and farming practices

2:05

from one province to another. And

2:08

then on top of that, the people who were making decisions

2:10

in this economy didn't always understand

2:13

the realities of the labor force or

2:15

the work they were doing, so consequently there

2:17

were some pretty bad decisions. The

2:20

result was a huge famine that started

2:22

in nineteen fifty nine, although there were a

2:24

few isolated pockets that started earlier

2:26

than that. In China, For many

2:29

many years. This famine when was known

2:31

as the three Years of Natural Disasters

2:34

or the three Difficult Years, or sometimes

2:37

the three Years of Bad Weather. And

2:39

while there was some bad weather in some parts

2:41

of China, this famine was

2:43

really not at all the result of a natural

2:46

disaster of any sort. No

2:49

UH. China's shift to a planned

2:51

economy affected its agricultural

2:53

workforce almost immediately, so

2:55

there was a big focus on uniformity, implementing

2:58

the same agricultural plans this same way

3:00

in every province, regardless of what that

3:02

province's terrain was actually like, and

3:05

if there wasn't enough farmland, forest, grasslands

3:07

and wetlands were to be made into arable

3:10

land. Consequently, there was

3:12

deforestation, which led to erosion.

3:14

People also wasted a whole lot of

3:17

time and labor, labor and fruitless

3:19

efforts to transform lakes and rivers

3:21

into farmland. In addition

3:24

to that, people who had been nomadic

3:26

livestock herders were displaced when

3:28

the grasslands where they had been hurting

3:31

their uh their animals were instead

3:33

made into farmland, and the central

3:36

planners were making economic decisions,

3:38

but they were not farmers. In in addition

3:40

to being out of their field. They were

3:43

separated from the realities of the workers,

3:45

the markets, and the products, so

3:47

they were basically making decisions and setting

3:49

goals without the information they needed

3:51

to do it well, and some of the directions

3:54

they gave were just simply devastating.

3:56

For example, and one province,

3:59

an administrator changed his mind over

4:01

and over about what he wanted the people

4:03

to be planting, so the peasants

4:05

would have to dig up every crop and replace

4:07

it with another one when he changed his mind.

4:10

By the time he actually settled on a crop

4:12

and stuck to it, it was too late in the

4:15

growing season for it to be harvested

4:17

before the winter came. And

4:19

another example, people in their commune

4:21

were forced to plant their crops way too

4:24

early in the season and the seeds just froze

4:26

in the ground, so thanks

4:28

to mismanagement from various angles,

4:31

the harvests were basically primed

4:33

to be poor. In addition

4:35

to the overall effect of these policies

4:37

from the Great Leap Forward, one campaign

4:40

in particular was extremely destructive

4:42

to China's crops, and it didn't really have anything

4:45

directly to do with farming. On

4:47

May eight, Mouse spoke

4:49

at the second session of the Eighth party

4:51

Congress, and there he said, quote, the

4:54

whole people, including five year old children,

4:57

must be mobilized to eliminate

4:59

the four pests. So these

5:01

pests were mosquitoes, flies,

5:05

rats, and sparrows.

5:07

And those first three probably make fairly

5:09

immediate sense to most people. Mosquitoes,

5:12

flies, and rats all spread disease, and they're

5:14

generally thought of as dirty, and most people do not

5:16

like them. And sparrows were

5:19

on the list because they were eating grain. So

5:21

people really set to work. In addition to

5:24

the mosquitoes, the flies, and the rats,

5:27

uh set to work trying to kill sparrows. Whole

5:29

classrooms of students would go outside to

5:31

knock down sparrows nests.

5:33

People would ring gongs and make other

5:36

noise to try to frighten sparrows

5:38

away from their roosts. They

5:40

would just make really constant noise to keep the

5:42

sparrows from landing anywhere ever, and

5:44

the birds would eventually disdrop from the

5:46

sky because they were exhausted. For

5:49

a while, sparrows actually became

5:51

parts of people's diets until the birds

5:53

themselves became scarce. And

5:56

sparrows did eat grain. I mean, we know

5:58

that, but we're also eating

6:00

locusts. So by

6:03

ninety nine the sparrow population

6:05

had dropped so drastically that locusts

6:08

actually became a problem in the fields,

6:10

and they destroyed crops and contributed

6:12

to the burgeoning famine. It became

6:14

pretty obvious pretty quickly that killing spars

6:16

is a bad idea, so in nineteen sixty

6:19

the government decided that bed bugs would be the

6:21

fourth pest um, And apart

6:23

from sparrow killing and the clear

6:26

role that it played in contributing to a famine,

6:29

the campaign did actually reduce

6:31

the spread of diseases that travel

6:33

via mosquitoes, flies and rats.

6:36

So on the

6:38

one hand, it did have a small but

6:40

measurable positive impact,

6:42

but the measurable effect

6:44

that had on the crops was much bigger and much more

6:47

terrible. This is actually We

6:49

had a couple of things that led to the this

6:51

mini series, and one was that someone

6:53

recommended this the Foe Pest

6:55

campaign as a subject for a podcast.

6:58

UM. I don't think

7:00

the person who suggested it realized

7:05

quite how huge the consequences were, because

7:08

it came about in one of the we would

7:10

like something a little lighter to talk about, um,

7:13

and we got a lot of things that were not at

7:15

all light when we asked for that, and they were clearly jokes

7:17

and this was not one of them. Um,

7:20

So before were we talked about what happened

7:22

when this running out of food

7:25

caused by the Great Leap Forward policies

7:27

and the killing of all the sparrows,

7:29

before we talk about how that played out. Let's

7:31

take a brief moment for a word from a sponsor.

7:34

It sounds just fine. So

7:37

to return to the famine, Yes,

7:39

China ran out of food. The very nature

7:41

of the People's Communes which have been

7:43

created as part of the Great Leap Forward, actually

7:46

contributed to the famine. This

7:48

was both in terms of contributing to the food shortage

7:51

itself and contributing to an inability

7:53

to deal with the shortage of food. And

7:56

Casey missed the episode on the Great Leap

7:58

Forward. Farm collectives had

8:00

been organized in uh together

8:02

to form People's Communes, and

8:04

these were given overly ambitious

8:07

goals for how they're big their harvests would

8:09

be. The goals were simply too big

8:11

for people to be able to meet them, no matter how

8:13

hard they worked, no matter how

8:15

many advancements were made in irrigation

8:18

and farming equipment. The goals were

8:20

impossible, and the government

8:22

had already proven that it was willing to crack

8:24

down hard on discent that

8:27

was also talked about a little bit in the Greatly

8:30

Forward episode, and that failure

8:32

was not going to be an option. So administrators

8:35

vastly overreported how much they

8:37

had harvested so it would look like they

8:39

had met these ridiculously high goals.

8:41

And then the government, believing there to be a surplus,

8:44

encouraged the communal canteens at the communes

8:47

uh and elsewhere in the provinces to service

8:49

serve really lavish meals. The

8:51

government continued to exporting grain and providing

8:54

food aid to other nations. Um

8:57

Agricultural laborers also needed

8:59

more food than before because they were being expected

9:02

to work in other industries during their

9:04

farms off season. So a year

9:06

or so into the Great Leap, thanks to all of

9:08

these things we've already talked about, many parts

9:10

of China ran out of food. And

9:12

when this happened, the communal canteens,

9:15

which were supposed to be a way to keep China's

9:17

workers fed, actually became a

9:19

primary contributor to the famine. Even

9:21

before the canteen dran out of food, in

9:23

the most remote provinces, it could be miles

9:26

from where people lived and worked to where they were supposed

9:28

to eat, So, on top of the back breaking

9:31

labor that came along with the great leap forwards

9:33

astronomical projected targets

9:36

for their production, people had to then walk

9:38

great distances to and from the

9:40

communal canteens just to get their meals.

9:43

The canteens also distributed food

9:45

based on people's ability to work, so as

9:47

food became scarce, children

9:49

and the elderly especially received

9:51

less and less food because they weren't working.

9:53

So basically, populations who were already at

9:56

risk for various health effects were getting the least

9:58

food when things got really

10:00

die or people even started stealing food

10:02

from the government run preschools, daycares

10:04

and nursing homes. Pregnant

10:07

women were also particularly at risk,

10:09

so their bodies of course needed more nourishment,

10:12

so they were already at a disadvantage because the portions

10:14

were simply not sufficient to sustain the

10:17

whole process they were going

10:19

through building another human inside

10:21

of themselves that takes some calories, uh,

10:23

and then his workloads got higher and higher,

10:26

those pregnant women weren't really able to keep

10:28

up with the physical demands that were made of them.

10:31

So we're not saying at all that pregnant women can't

10:33

work, but this was seriously backbreaking

10:35

labor that was really hard

10:37

even on like very hale

10:39

and hardy people. So this

10:42

was driving you know, young, healthy people to

10:45

exhaustions. So add to that again

10:47

creating another human, which is also very exhausting

10:49

in many ways. It's a pretty

10:51

impossible scenario. When

10:54

the food supplied dwindled, the

10:57

very tool the Chinese government had created

10:59

to feed its workers had no means to

11:01

feed them anymore. The communes were supposed

11:03

to be dishing out free meals, and there

11:05

just was no more food to dish out. So

11:07

in nineteen fifty nine and nineteen sixty the

11:09

government's recommendations turned to food

11:12

augmentation and food substitution.

11:15

The government had actually actually already

11:18

decreed that people not eat meat at all

11:20

before they started making these recommendations, so

11:22

people were already making some dietary

11:25

swaps. Um you know, anyone

11:27

who had eaten meat previously and no longer

11:29

could. People were already swapping other things

11:31

into their diet before these

11:33

official official recommendations came

11:35

into play, and food augmentation

11:38

was basically a collection of cooking

11:40

and preparation methods that added

11:42

bulk to meals without requiring more

11:44

ingredients. So it started

11:46

by augmenting rice dishes with corn

11:48

until corn also became scarce,

11:51

and then it evolved to taking rice that was

11:53

partly cooked, grinding it up in a mill,

11:56

adding yeast, and steaming it as

11:58

it started to leven. And this ushed

12:00

buns that required less flour than normal.

12:02

Yeah. The reason that corn was considered

12:05

an augment when we think of corn as

12:07

food is that corn was more

12:09

used for animal feed than for people. Um

12:12

At that point, different

12:14

augmentation methods were devised based on

12:16

what was available to eat in various regions

12:18

of China, and while these methods

12:21

might have yielded a larger volume

12:23

of food, they didn't really increase

12:25

the nutritional content of the food. So

12:28

while people had physically more

12:30

food to eat, they didn't

12:32

have a corresponding increasing calories

12:34

or nutrients. So edema or

12:36

fluid retention, which is a side effect

12:39

of malnourishment, became endemic. In

12:41

July of nineteen sixty, when it was clear

12:44

that augmentation was simply not enough

12:46

to solve the problem, China started

12:48

encouraging food substitution. First,

12:51

people were encouraged to swap fruits

12:53

and vegetables into their diet in place of

12:56

grain. That by this point, even

12:58

before the government made this commendation,

13:00

a lot of provinces had already run out

13:03

of their food, their fruit and vegetables

13:05

surplus because people were doing exactly

13:07

that. Uh people started

13:09

scavenging bark, roots and even

13:11

wild plants. Some resorted

13:13

to eating white clay, which contained calcium

13:16

but also sometimes caused constipation,

13:18

in some cases so badly that it was fatal.

13:21

People cultivated clorella,

13:23

which is a type of algae that was being used

13:26

as pig feed for human consumption,

13:28

So they either grew it in puddles

13:31

or in pots in their homes, and

13:33

they would feed the clorella urine, either

13:35

their own urine or urine from their animals,

13:38

and the list of food substitutes grew.

13:41

The husks and stocks of grain crops

13:43

like corn and rice became

13:45

adopted as food items. Potato stems,

13:48

lichen insects, tree

13:50

bark, at least for the trees had not been felled

13:52

to make room for farmland. Wild

13:55

vegetables, and wild fungi were all

13:57

kind of added into the diet wherever possible,

14:00

but that some of these substitutes, especially

14:02

the wild vegetables and the fungi,

14:05

were really either inedible or poisonous,

14:07

and people got sick from eating them. People

14:09

also got sick from eating food that was spoiled.

14:12

And there was one UH official

14:15

that was on a tour and found

14:17

a home where people were using human waste

14:20

as fertilizer. But the

14:22

human waste they were using was basically all

14:24

fiber, because all they had been eating was

14:27

this undigestible husks

14:29

and stalks of other plants.

14:32

And in some provinces

14:34

this again hearkens back a little bit too

14:37

um the previous episode in this mini

14:39

series, people's cooking implements

14:41

had been confiscated to force them

14:43

to eat in the communal canteens.

14:46

But in these parts of China, people couldn't

14:48

prepare substitutes for themselves even

14:50

if they wanted to, so because

14:53

of all this, people were dying through starvation,

14:55

poisoning, and malnutrition related

14:58

diseases, as well as a sharp

15:00

increase at in violent crimes

15:02

and suicides, and

15:04

in desperation, some people also turned

15:06

to cannibalism. There were more than one

15:08

thousand reports of people being eaten, sometimes

15:11

after being killed. Human flesh

15:14

was even traded on the black market as a

15:16

meat. People also trafficked

15:18

women and children in exchange

15:20

for food. Just dire.

15:23

All around. It was extremely dire. I

15:26

saw various statistics. A lot of

15:28

their record keeping during this period was not

15:31

great, and some of it was actually

15:34

pretty good, but has been kept secret for a really

15:36

long time. Um huge

15:38

spikes in all kinds of violent crimes,

15:41

just because people were so desperate for anything

15:43

to eat at all, and China

15:45

had been strict and swift and punishing

15:47

people who spoke out. So most of the resistance

15:50

on the part of workers was in the form of idoling.

15:53

They would pretend to work, they would work slowly

15:56

uh there was some food stealing, or

15:58

they would conceal what they had harvested and

16:00

they would squirrel away the rest of

16:03

it. People also ate food raw

16:05

in the fields as they worked, and

16:07

so when harvest time arrived in nineteen sixty,

16:10

some places actually had nothing to harvest

16:12

because of this. The food had literally been eaten

16:14

right out of the crops. As

16:16

the famine got worse, some people started

16:18

to leave the rural areas. Tens

16:21

of millions of people moved into cities,

16:23

and this was actually in defiance of bands

16:26

on migration. People

16:28

often didn't have much better lives in the

16:30

city. They wound up doing the most menial,

16:33

dangerous and dirty work available,

16:35

usually for the least money. This

16:38

big influx of new residents also

16:40

strained the city's resources. In some

16:42

places, like the whole health care system basically

16:44

collapsed because of the influx of

16:47

sick and starving people from the country,

16:50

and the government, for its part, chalked

16:52

up the famine and all of these deaths to

16:55

quote class enemies who

16:57

were sabotaging the people's communes in

16:59

their opinions. The government's slogan

17:01

at this point was good days make

17:03

up for the bad ones. During

17:06

the famine, dignitaries from

17:08

other nations who visited China were

17:10

generally given escorted tours

17:12

that went to areas that weren't affected. You

17:15

know, although food was scarce and pretty much all

17:17

of China things were the worst in world

17:19

rural areas and even within

17:22

China, there was for almost two

17:24

years a great effort at every

17:27

level to make it seem as though things were proceeding

17:29

normally, and even so,

17:31

other nations really did get wind that something

17:34

was not quite right, something was amiss. The

17:36

Red Cross offered aid, but made

17:39

the mistake of starting by asking whether Tibet

17:41

needed help, and this was just after the

17:43

uprising in Tibet that led to the Dali Lama's

17:45

flight to India. When China

17:48

replied that Tibet was fine, the Red Cross

17:50

asked whether China was okay too,

17:53

since China's position was that Tibet was

17:55

part of China, there was really

17:57

some umbridge taken, and Unial

18:00

maatterly declined the Red Cross's attempt

18:02

to help, yeah that that this was

18:04

basically the biggest faux pa that

18:06

the Red Cross could have made when

18:08

asking if China needed their help was to insinuate

18:11

that Tibet was not part of China.

18:13

Um Eventually, a couple of Chinese

18:15

officials were instrumental in

18:18

convincing Chairman Mao and the rest of the Chinese

18:20

Communist Party that they had to

18:22

end the greatly forward and stopped the famine.

18:25

One was Lu Shaochi, who

18:28

at that point was the head

18:30

of the Chinese head of State and for

18:32

a while he was considered to be Mao's

18:34

heir apparent in terms of leading the CCP.

18:37

Lou saw conditions in China that horrified

18:40

him when he toured it in April of nineteen sixty

18:42

one. People were starving to death

18:44

and entire villages were virtually empty.

18:47

The homes of the people who had died or fled

18:50

had even been dismantled and used as fuel

18:52

for the fires, and no one would

18:54

tell him the truth about what happened. One

18:56

of these stops was in his home village,

18:59

where he found really horrific conditions,

19:01

including a communal canteen that had almost

19:03

nothing to eat. A lot of people were

19:06

starving or had starved. He

19:08

realized when he was visiting that

19:10

the reason he had stopped getting letters

19:12

from home was that the people who knew

19:14

him couldn't lie to him, and

19:16

they were also too afraid to tell him the truth,

19:19

so consequently they just stopped writing.

19:21

He held a village meeting at which he said

19:24

quote, I haven't returned home for nearly

19:26

forty years. I really wanted to

19:28

come home for a visit. Now I have

19:30

seen how bitter your lives are. We

19:33

have not done our jobs well, and we beg

19:35

for your pardon. From

19:37

that point on, you became an

19:39

important, outspoken critic of

19:41

the Great Leap Forwards policies, placing

19:43

the blame for it directly on the Chinese Communist

19:46

Party, not on the weather class

19:48

enemies or any of the other skategoats

19:51

that have been used thus far. He came

19:53

to a sad end, which we will probably

19:56

talk about in our next

19:58

episode in the since alment. Uh

20:01

Lee Fu Chune, the chairman of the

20:03

State Planning Commission, was another

20:05

person who really helped the Chinese

20:07

government backtrack out of

20:10

this mess. He orchestrated

20:12

the nation's retreat from the Great Leap Forward

20:14

plan. He had really supported the plan

20:17

and had stuck to the party line before

20:19

lose scathing criticisms

20:21

when he came back from his visit to his home village,

20:24

Lee described the Leap Forward as too

20:26

high, too big, too equal,

20:29

to dispersed, to chaotic, too

20:31

fast, and too inclined to transfer

20:34

resource. Under his direction,

20:36

they put plans together to lower the

20:38

astronomical production targets and

20:41

to write the economy. He still

20:44

really stood by Chairman Mao, though, and

20:46

said that his directives had been entirely

20:49

correct, but that everyone else had made

20:51

mistakes in implementing them.

20:53

Um this famine actually had some enormous

20:55

consequences long term for China,

20:58

and we will talk about those after another

21:00

brief word from a sponsor, so

21:03

to talk about the consequences of the famine.

21:05

As the famine reached a really critical point,

21:08

the Chinese government started returning private

21:10

plots of land to the peasantry so people

21:13

could grow food again. And this was a

21:15

solution, but of course not one that was immediate.

21:17

They didn't instantly have food in the manute the

21:19

minute they got farmland, necessarily

21:21

unless it just happened to be the right season. They

21:24

also got rid of the dining halls and started

21:26

importing grain to feed people. China's

21:29

own supply of grain, having been so

21:32

damaged by all of this, didn't really

21:34

start to grow back again until nineteen sixty

21:36

two, at which point the government

21:38

started redistributing some of the harvest back

21:40

to the people. A lot of the greatly

21:43

forwards industrial projects were never finished

21:45

because the labor to do them starved

21:48

to death. According

21:50

to the Chinese State Statistical Bureau,

21:52

ten million people died. According

21:55

to western estimates that have been extrapolated

21:58

from census records, the number was really were

22:00

like between thirty five million and forty five

22:02

million, and it wasn't all because

22:04

of starvation, as we've said in a

22:06

couple of episodes now, some of it

22:08

was due to disease and suicide

22:10

and violent crime. In Sinyong,

22:13

sixty seven thousand people

22:16

were clugged to death for various infractions.

22:19

And not surprisingly, the famine also took

22:21

a pretty significant toll on China's birth

22:24

rate. In ninety seven, China's

22:26

total fertility was six point

22:28

four children per woman. By nineteen

22:30

sixty one, it was three point three children

22:32

per woman. Birth dropped from

22:35

thirty four per one thousand people to

22:37

just eighteen point two per thousand.

22:40

This whole subject was taboo

22:42

in China and was censored for many

22:44

many years until in May of twelve,

22:47

Lindsey Bo, who was head of the

22:49

Gansu branch of the People's Daily News

22:51

Service, made some posts that denied

22:53

that the famine had ever really happened. First

22:56

person accounts of it then went viral

22:59

on Chinese social media. Uh

23:01

Yang Jishang, who was once a Chinese

23:03

reporter, spent ten years

23:05

on a secret effort to find as much documentation

23:08

of what has really happened as he possibly could.

23:11

He combed through official accounts that have been

23:13

buried or hidden, and the result

23:15

is an enormous two volume work that is banned

23:17

in China but circulated through bootleg

23:20

copies. It was at least banned

23:22

as of twelve and we weren't able to determine

23:24

whether it is still banned today. And

23:27

his point of view is he he doesn't care

23:30

that it's being bootlegged and passed around China.

23:32

He wants people to have access to the history

23:34

that is found there. The English version is much shorter.

23:37

UM it's sort of a more

23:39

edited, streamlined version that

23:42

his two volume one is basically everything he could

23:44

find at all. UM.

23:46

The Folk History Project collected

23:48

oral histories of the famine through the work

23:50

of a hundred and eight volunteers who

23:53

put their work into different UM creative

23:55

and documentary projects. A

23:58

lot of people. Chairman Mao

24:00

is saying, when there is not enough to eat, people

24:03

starved to death, it is better to let half

24:05

of people die so that others can eat their fill.

24:08

And while he did definitely say that, it seems

24:10

from context that he was speaking metaphorically

24:12

about workloads. The rest of

24:14

the statement that quote comes from is

24:16

about production, not about people literally

24:19

having enough food to eat. So people pull

24:21

that quote out in reference to this, but

24:24

kind of out of contact. It came from the same

24:26

era. That is the thing he said. It was

24:29

probably not the most thoughtful thing to

24:31

say during a time when people were starving

24:33

to death, but it came

24:35

up. It's from a sort of

24:37

paragraph at a meeting that's all

24:39

about like industry

24:41

targets. That's not about people actually

24:44

having enough food to eat. So that

24:46

is like the quote itself is

24:48

accurate, but I think people apply

24:50

it to the famine when it was not

24:52

really about the famine. And

24:57

how clear are we on how much he

24:59

actually realized what was going on. There

25:01

is concrete evidence that

25:04

he and the rest of the Chinese Communist Party

25:06

leadership were aware that people were starming

25:08

as early as n UM,

25:12

but action was not really

25:14

taken. They so when

25:17

we had our episodes about the

25:20

the Irish potato famine, we

25:22

we told this story of basically government

25:25

in action. Like for a long time everybody

25:28

was like, yeah, the adult sort itself out, and

25:31

this was not that. It was more like, we

25:33

just have to stick to the plan and it will

25:35

work out if we just get over this hurdle,

25:38

right, And they thought it was a growing pain of

25:40

the process and not yeah,

25:42

and that you know, maybe these augmentations and substitutions

25:45

would be enough to get them over this and it it

25:47

would it would work. I also found reference

25:49

in one place too, uh the

25:51

Great Leap Forward having implemented farming

25:54

practices that were bad and planning crops

25:56

that were not compatible with each other in the same field.

25:59

I could not find any

26:02

uh confirmation of that besides this one source.

26:04

So I don't know if that really happened, but um,

26:07

yeah, it was sort of they had this stubborn

26:10

insistence that this would

26:12

really work and it was the way to make China

26:14

great because that was

26:17

all part of a plan to try to put China

26:19

on par with the UK in fifteen years

26:21

and with the United States and thirty so

26:24

nobody wanted to back down from it, which

26:27

is devastating really.

26:30

Yeah, Like these were not

26:32

evil people who wanted people to starve to death,

26:34

but they also were not They thought that

26:36

was sort of like a sacrificial period they

26:38

were going to have to get through to get to the amazing part.

26:41

A little misguided, uh,

26:45

in less upsetting you

26:49

have, I do have listener mail.

26:51

I also have a correction, but a couple of people

26:53

have written to us about in our

26:55

episode about the discovery of longitude.

26:58

There's a shipwreck that is very into that

27:00

story. That shipwreck happened

27:03

off the aisles of Skilly, not

27:06

the island of Sicily. Is

27:10

my reading

27:12

comprehension error. I think

27:14

that's a pretty common one. Yeah. Well,

27:17

and as I was like, I typed it in and uh

27:20

and Wikipedia came up and the very top

27:22

of Wikipedia is like not

27:24

to be confused with, Like, oh

27:26

yeah, thanks Wikipedia, I

27:30

was confused with um

27:32

anyway, to reiterate, we do not use Wikipedia

27:34

as a source on this podcast. I also

27:37

have actual listener mail. It is from Brianna.

27:39

She says, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I've been

27:41

listening to your podcast for the last six months and

27:43

you have quickly become my favorite thing to listen to

27:45

in the mornings. Your podcast actually makes

27:47

me look forward to my commute each week, which is

27:49

a small miracle. I'm

27:52

writing in response to your Battle of Blair Mountain episode.

27:54

You talked about company towns created by the mines

27:56

in West Virginia, and I wanted to bring to your attention

27:59

another company town which many people

28:01

have never heard of, Lanice City,

28:03

Hawaii. I was privileged

28:05

to live on Lanai, a tiny

28:07

island next to Maui, Hawaii, for

28:09

six months, and I fell in love with the people in

28:11

culture. Lanai is privately

28:13

owned and was once the world's largest pineapple

28:16

plantation, owned by James Dole until

28:18

he sold it in nine When

28:20

I lived on the island, I heard from the people there

28:23

that Mr. Dole sent his foreman to the Philippines

28:25

in nineteen twelve to bring back uneducated

28:27

Philipino Filipino men to work on his

28:29

plantation. He didn't want them to read

28:31

or write and organize against him. Ultimately,

28:34

women were allowed and families began to grow.

28:36

Workers didn't own their homes, used tokens

28:38

to shop at the company owned store, and

28:40

had to deal with an abrupt change in lifestyle

28:43

once Dole moved their plantation, ironically

28:45

to the Philippines. In I've

28:48

never been able to find any research on the island

28:50

to confirm what I heard from my friends there. In

28:53

fact, there's not not much written about

28:55

it at all. I've hope I've given

28:57

you enough info to pique your interest. I

28:59

think Lena and the Dull Plantation

29:01

would make for a fantastic episode. This

29:04

may be true, However,

29:08

I will confess that when listeners

29:10

write to us and say I've looked a lot for this information

29:12

and I can't find it, usually we can't find it either.

29:15

Uh, we don't have a magical portal. I

29:18

wish we did. I mean we we you

29:20

know, we get paid to do this among other of

29:23

our jobs, so we can devote some extra time,

29:26

did you we And we're both I think fairly good at,

29:28

you know, ferreting out things that might be a little bit

29:30

difficult to locate. Well. Yeah, having a

29:32

boyfriend who's a librarian is also quite

29:34

easy. Lord it over us. Um.

29:36

But yes, if you if it's

29:38

hard for you to find much information, especially

29:41

if you live there in the midst of it. Uh,

29:44

I mean that'd be so easy, but you never know what will

29:47

happen. Yeah. She goes on to say that, um,

29:49

it's the island has changed hands a few times

29:51

and now it's owned by Larry Ellison of Oracle.

29:54

I think the best way to research this is to get

29:56

on a plane and go to Hawaii. I

29:58

was thinking the best way to research it is to go to

30:00

Disney World and eat dull whip. That's

30:03

what I kept thinking about every time, because it's

30:05

just Disneyland, that's closer to Hawaii. Yeah,

30:07

every time, she says, dull, thank

30:10

you very much Brandon for this letter. Uh.

30:13

Maybe we will manage to find some information.

30:15

But I have a feeling but if you have looked for information

30:18

and not found it, that we probably will not find

30:20

it either, which is you never

30:22

know. Well, maybe we'll see if

30:25

you would like to write to us. We're a history podcasts at

30:27

how stuffworks dot com. We're also on Facebook

30:29

at Facebook dot com slash mist in history and

30:31

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30:34

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30:36

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30:39

We have a spreadshirt store full of

30:41

all kinds of awesome merch and

30:43

that is at miss in history dot spreadshirt dot

30:45

com. If you would like to learn more about

30:47

what we've talked about today, come to the website

30:49

of our parent company, how stuff Works dot

30:52

com and put the word famine into

30:54

the search bar. You will find the depressing

30:56

read how Famine Works. You

30:58

can also come to our website you will find the show

31:00

notes for this episode that will

31:02

include all of the sources that we used on it.

31:04

If you would like more details about specifics.

31:07

There are a couple of books. Uh.

31:09

There are at least two books that I read on this

31:11

list. There are three books and four There are

31:13

four books on this list uh

31:16

that you may be interested in. If you would like more detail

31:19

about it, you can do that

31:21

at our website, which is missed in history

31:23

dot com. Or you can read about Tamin

31:26

on how stuff works dot com

31:30

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31:33

Is it how stuff works dot com