国内英语新闻:A reform triggered by hunger

BEIJING, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- When the 18 farmers in east China's Anhui Province, their bellies rumbling, stamped red fingerprints on the land-contracting agreement three decades ago, they never expected they might be making history.

"We had no other choice," said 70-year-old Yan Lixue. Prior to World Food Day this Saturday, he recalled the bitterness and successes from those past days.

The elderly man used to be head of the production team at Xiaogang Village in Fengyang County.

At that time, Fengyang was dubbed the "hometown of beggars", and was infamous for its poverty. It was the hometown of Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor (1368-98) of the Ming Dynasty. Ironically, Zhu, started as an insurrectionary army leader, though he used to be a beggar, too. The local opera in Fengyang was said to be sung for begging, at the beginning.

With stubble on his square chin, Yan said his only memory of those days was hunger.

"At that time, we ate from the 'big cooking pot'," he recalled. The "big cooking pot" referred to the public kitchen. Establishment of the Peoples' Commune was made official state policy in 1958. In the Commune, everything was shared and people were encouraged to eat in the commune's kitchen. Private cooking was then banned and replaced by communal dining.

But the food from the "big cooking pot" was not enough. In Yan's memory, the days were horrible when there were fewer than 0.25 kilograms of grain per person.

"Sometimes people ate wild herbs or bark from the trees," he said.

As a result, 67 people died of hunger during the Great Leap Forward from 1959 to 1961 when six out of over 30 households in Xiaogang disappeared. In Fengyang, 90,000 people, or one in four people, died.

"Sometimes you would see a person tumble and never stand up again," Yan said.

The nightmare was shared by another villager, Guan Youjiang.

"I had four children. When they cried with hunger, my heart ached," he recalled. In his home there were only pots and beds.

Yan went out to beg in 1976. At first he begged in nearby Huaiyuan County, and then roamed further to the richer Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

He then refused to lead the production team any more. "The young people mostly went out to beg and few were left to work on the field."

In fact, they were not allowed to beg all year long. "We took turns going out. There had to be someone working for the village."

Realizing that they could starve to death, Yan believed that they had nothing to lose, although "signing the land contracting agreement could mean severe penalties, like imprisonment or even execution," he said.