Poor Chinese farmers facing forced resettlement for their nation’s latest vast hydro project bear a wrenching past, none more so than the survivors of an exodus to the high northwest from 1959.
The central canal for the South-to-North Water Transfer Project will take water from the Danjiangkou Dam, which first rose during former Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) fervent and ultimately calamitous attempt from 1958 to rush the country into communist plenty.
“At that the time, the country was calling for young people to volunteer to go to Qinghai,” recalled Zhao Jingzhou, a white-whiskered farmer in his late 60s from Shizigang Village beside the dam. “Material life was pretty hard, but if you went to volunteer in Qinghai you could have a safer life.”
But Zhao and thousands of other villagers found that the promise of a more secure life in the arid highlands of the northwest province next to Tibet turned to disaster.
That experience, along with decades of poverty, now echoes in the farmers’ anger at the prospect of moving again for the water transfer scheme.
“We have eaten too much suffering already,” Zhao said, using a common Chinese saying.
The villagers have been ordered to resettle hundreds of kilometers away later this year.
Fifty years ago, drawn by promises of a better life thousands of kilometers from their homes in central Henan Province, over 22,000 of the dam-side farmers signed up to move to Qinghai.
The government was opening up the long-isolated region with the same utopian zeal that inspired Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
But the Great Leap Forward and the exodus of the dam migrants ended in deadly famine that older villagers in Shizigang recalled in matter-of-fact, sometimes bitter, tones.
“All there was to eat was paste,” Zhao said, describing a kind of nutritionless glue that famished farmers pounded from roots and wild plants. “A lot of people starved, especially the older ones who fell sick. There was no medicine for them.”
Historians believe that about 20 million, perhaps up to 30 million, Chinese people died from lack of food as Mao’s attempt to create massive communes and collective canteens collapsed in inefficiency, mismanagement and widespread brutality.
The old farmers of Shizigang also said that the reservoir, now the centerpiece of the water transfer project, was spared none of that suffering.
“There was no food to eat so I went to Qinghai. When we first went it was okay. Life was harder but we could manage,” said Shi Jinsheng, another dam migrant who volunteered to move to the northwest in 1959. “But then there was less food there and then none. Our bellies bloated like babies’.”
One local author, Mei Jie, quoted documents from the Qinghai famine in her 2007 history of the dam and the transfer project, The Great River Goes North.
“Owing to poor living adjustment, as well as the climate and poor acclimatization, not only is the spread of epidemics extremely serious, the death rate is about 30 percent,” stated one 1961 government report from Xichuan County, Henan, which sent the dam migrants to Qinghai.
That would mean about 7,000 died. Other documents in the book put the number at about 5,400.
Nearly all the survivors fled back to the dam area, either escaping, as Zhao did, or later moving back with the help of officials. Those still alive are now scattered around there, or the other towns and villages where they were later resettled.
MORE VISITORS: The Tourism Administration said that it is seeing positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet. The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10. A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate. The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls
TRADE: A mandatory declaration of origin for manufactured goods bound for the US is to take effect on May 7 to block China from exploiting Taiwan’s trade channels All products manufactured in Taiwan and exported to the US must include a signed declaration of origin starting on May 7, the Bureau of Foreign Trade announced yesterday. US President Donald Trump on April 2 imposed a 32 percent tariff on imports from Taiwan, but one week later announced a 90-day pause on its implementation. However, a universal 10 percent tariff was immediately applied to most imports from around the world. On April 12, the Trump administration further exempted computers, smartphones and semiconductors from the new tariffs. In response, President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration has introduced a series of countermeasures to support affected
CROSS-STRAIT: The vast majority of Taiwanese support maintaining the ‘status quo,’ while concern is rising about Beijing’s influence operations More than eight out of 10 Taiwanese reject Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework for cross-strait relations, according to a survey released by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday. The MAC’s latest quarterly survey found that 84.4 percent of respondents opposed Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula for handling cross-strait relations — a figure consistent with past polling. Over the past three years, opposition to the framework has remained high, ranging from a low of 83.6 percent in April 2023 to a peak of 89.6 percent in April last year. In the most recent poll, 82.5 percent also rejected China’s
PLUGGING HOLES: The amendments would bring the legislation in line with systems found in other countries such as Japan and the US, Legislator Chen Kuan-ting said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷) has proposed amending national security legislation amid a spate of espionage cases. Potential gaps in security vetting procedures for personnel with access to sensitive information prompted him to propose the amendments, which would introduce changes to Article 14 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Chen said yesterday. The proposal, which aims to enhance interagency vetting procedures and reduce the risk of classified information leaks, would establish a comprehensive security clearance system in Taiwan, he said. The amendment would require character and loyalty checks for civil servants and intelligence personnel prior to
RSS