My dear readers. When we last spoke China was moving forward under the leadership of Chairman Mao.
Although we continue to follow party policy in the hopes of not just moving forward but leaping forward. Things are bleak. I am still in Shaanxi with my family. I have not seen a smile in my house for years. We are all starving. My grandfather passed away after giving his food to my grandmother and now my grandmother is sick with malnutrition and most likely won’t make it. My father had to close his general store and is made to work in the fields. My mother who used to never leave the house now has to abandon my sick grandmother in order to tend to the children of the village. Once she tried to stay home to tend to my grandmother and was slapped by a party cadre for not showing up to the commune. The basis of our family has been broken by these party policies. I used to see my family every night for dinner but now we can only eat in the collective dining hall and it is not the same.
I work in the fields with my sister where we work long days with little food and are encouraged to implement farming methods thought of by party officials who I believe have been misguided. While not everyone has been a farmer the party’s ideas for how to plant crops seem strange. The idea of deep farming and planting the seeds deep underground to make stronger plants is possibly counterintuitive to Chairman Mao’s harvest goals and anyone who is educated and most with general experience knows that this will just kill the plant before it gets a chance to sprout.
We all follow these policies anyway because of our faith in Chairman Mao and his policies. He hasn’t led us astray yet and I hope this indescribable suffering is just in north China and that Chairman Mao is attempting to gather relief for us and replace our unreliable cadre as quickly as possible. We only wake up and get through the day because of the loudspeakers and posters showing us that these policies are working in other parts of China. The paper contained a photo of children standing on top of strong plants and we hope to achieve the same results if everything can run as Chairman Mao intends them. However, my confidence in these matters has been shaken. I wonder who approved these strategies for large-scale implementation. I am sure Chairman Mao is using China’s best and brightest to affirm his plans before the guidance is pushed to the peasants.
I hope beyond hope for a miracle to happen although I have no idea what can be done so that people will feel the effects fast enough to stop the suffering. I hope this is just a problem in the north of China and that the party is trying their best to solve it however only time will tell. I hope you are all with your families and that you are having a better time than I.