The Jinquan Iron and Steel Company in NW China
In April 1960, I was assigned to Jinquan Iron and Steel Company in northwestern China. It had just been established as a steel base. To get there, travel by train from northeast Anshan to northwest Jinquan, took four days and nights. On the train we slept on a wide bed made to hold a number of people. But more people had to fit on the bed than it was made for and before long we all had lice. As the train went in a westward direction from Zhengzhou pass to Xian, the soil got poorer and poorer. Jinquan was at a distance of 10km beyond the Great Wall through the Jiayn Strategic Pass. It was a boundless stretch of the Gobi Desert. Sand and cobble were all over. There was essentially no water except for a little water and grass at a high altitude around the Jiayn Stratigic Pass. Beyond the Pass we could not see any green.
During our travel we saw several examples of the horror that was taking place in China at this time. After a brief stop, we discovered a boy outside the train, holding on to the door. He shivered with cold and was very hungry. We brought him into the carriage and gave him food. Unfortunately there was little to spare because we had been given so little to eat. He had only what was given by the self-sacrificing ones. After he gathered whatever he could, he had even less than I had to eat.
At a stop to get off the train in Lanzhou, we washed in yellow silt water. We saw what was unheard of in the 1950’s, people trying to snatch food out of someone’s hands as they were eating. The Jinquan town is at a distance 20 li ( 2 li= 1 km) from base. On the way there we saw a group of children wearing only thin shirts and no trousers. Even a thirteen or fourteen year old girl did not have clothing. In April in the great northwest it is still winter. We did not know how they were surviving.
When we finally arrived at our work destination our task was to build simple and crude houses for us to live in. Laborers also were made to dig a channel to plant trees. They had to draw water from a distance of 20km from the Beida River. This was backbreaking work. With conditions such as this, neither people nor trees could survive.
On May 1, which is International Labor Day, a holiday in China, we all hoped to get some meat from the government, but as often happened, we were disappointed.
In October, I was assigned to work in the mine because it was the most arduous work. Jingtie Mountain is at a distance 20 li from base. We traveled by truck through the mountain range on a winding mountain dirt road. At the top of the mountain, which was a very high altitude, I developed a headache and severe congestion, which didn’t leave until after several weeks.
The day after we arrived I realized the place where we were located was actually very beautiful. Brown and violet mountain peaks, sparkling in the bright sun, surrounded us. The pass through which the Beide river flowed was an angry torrent with a temperature of 10 degrees C below zero. This river rolls thunderously on for a thousand li and we heard the roar all day and night long. A very strange thing happened at midday, it became dark. The sun hid behind a high mountain peak for two hours and then finally exposed itself again with bright wonderful light.
Next our task was making briquettes to warm ourselves. Our team drew the soil from the opposite bank and carried it by sling to us. Then we joined it with water and fine coal, making it into briquettes.
The food was very poor. Each person was given a grain coupon, but there was never enough to eat for all the hard labor that we were doing. We were all going hungry, and slowly, but surely starving to death. We were told to dig camel grass, which is a kind of shrub with a root that is found in the desert. Only camels will eat it. This was a vast territory with sparse camel grass. It was so sparse that one day we couldn’t even find any. The grass tasted so bitter. We had to grind it into powder, which needed to steep in lukewarm water over night to get rid of the bitter taste. Then we had to dry it in the sun, mix it into grain powder and make it as steamed buns. The buns were bigger than we usually had, so psychologically it felt like we were eating more. We might also get half of a steamed egg or some edible seaweed once in a while.
Several days before this Spring Festival I received an order to go back to the base. I traveled under the escort of a reliable party member and we went by tractor. It took an entire day and a night. When I got to the Jinquan base I realized the temperature was more than 20 degrees C below zero. I wore only a cotton-padded overcoat and lying on the tractor bed I shivered uncontrollably with cold. Frequently I ran, following the tractor to keep warm. As we passed, I saw a man sitting under the tree beside the mountain slope. It seemed that he was laughing, but then, in horror, I realized that he was dead. In such severe cold, you must push on with your journey even if you are cold and hungry. You can never sit down when you are tired because if you do, you may be like him and never get up.
My companions who left at a later time were less fortunate than I and had to walk on foot for two weeks through the mountains to get to Jinquan base. There were several posts on the winding mountain path with tents where people could rest, warm themselves by the fire and get water. One man after another would drop on the way, but it could not be allowed for one to stay down because that would imply certain death.
Things were getting worse all over. There was no longer a truck at the mine. There also was no food. That’s how things stood. At first we had felt full and strong and warmly enough dressed that we had hope of surviving. But, life now looked grim and hopeless.
When I returned to the base, I first discovered that all the people there were getting fat despite not having enough food. It was confusing and strange. Then I was told that the condition is called dropsy. With dropsy, you suffer from hunger and as a product of deficient nourishment the body retains water.
Secondly, I found that people were in terrible condition when they needed to have a bowel movement. People were always crying with great pain when defecating. They were suffering from severe constipation. No stool could leave the body regardless how hard they pushed. People would have to dig the feces from their anus by hand. People only ate the camel grass steamed buns made with milling, sorghum with its husk and we very seldom had vegetables and there was absolutely no oil or fat to lubricate the body. I suspected that I also might get dropsy and constipation, like the others.
Indeed, the constipation was starting, but the dropsy did not come. Only one week after I had gotten to the base, the condition of my bowel movements became painful. Our lavatory was a cover over a hole in the ground in the field. There was much red excrement and bloodstain on the ground. Because it was so cold, 20 degrees below zero, the excrement quickly became very hard and there was no stink. A person could walk on it. I preferred to defecate on open ground.
Oh, the pain made it feel as if I had a serious illness. I took deep breaths and controlled my diaphragm, but my excrement still stopped up my anus. I thought with the pain that this is perhaps like the cramps a woman has at the time of her menstrual period or at childbirth. People would cry so loudly and I was now among them. At 20 below zero in about half an hour I could dig the excrement bit by bit from my anus. From this time on I knew what a big space was found from rectum to anus. Originally I thought there was a small direct pipe from rectum to anus. But digging out each little bit made it seem so great.
It was one month since I had returned to base and I had not gotten dropsy. Perhaps it was because my sister had sent me a baked sweet potato in a grain ration from Shijiazhuang.
During this month workers lived relatively carefree and leisurely with no work. We would lie on the bed and talk about every matter or play poker. We sat around a fire to get warm every day. Only we were constantly hungry with so little to put into our mouths and such great pain to get anything out the other end.
American people may not understand or be able to imagine what such severe starvation is like. 12.5 kg to 20 kg of food each month is not enough to survive. You might try it, even for just a day or a short time. Have no meat, no grains, no vegetables and of course no fruit, only a bit of salted greens or greens with no salt, every day served in hot water, as a soup. The water actually filled us the most. Technical personnel, meaning those who do no physical exertion get 12.5 kg/ month and workers who do physical labor got 20 kg/ month. After even a few days of such an experiment you will see how much food a person needs to survive and how not having it not only effects physical functioning, but so greatly more psychological functioning.
The Spring Festival was coming again. We had no hope for meat because there was no meat to be had. But the Communist Government sent us white wheat flour for traditional steamed buns.
Some people could not handle the constant feeling of emptiness. It affects one psychologically and spiritually. You begin to feel as small and inconsequential as the food we got to eat. In order to experience the feeling of being full, young workers would sometimes use the entire month’s grain coupon in a short period of time. Then they would totally starve with nothing to eat for the rest of the time. It didn’t seem to matter that this was a very dangerous thing to do health wise. And once the starvation begins it is hard to remember the brief good feelings of being full. Nothing seemed to matter.
Sometimes people would try to steal grain coupons. Someone stole my grain coupon one month. I knew who stole it, so I informed the security section. I knew that I would die if I had no food for a month. To my surprise the section chief reprimanded me. He said that I should not bother to report my problems, but that I should have vigorously grabbed the thief and taken care of it myself. I actually felt too weak to chase the man and probably fight with him. I shared all this with some others who slept near me and we approached the man as a group and regained my coupons.
One day a truck arrived at our base and people got on to unload the cargo. They soon discovered a dead young man. When did he climb in? Did he die of cold? Did he die of hunger? Or was it most likely a combination of the two? Regardless, it was a horrible sight to see one so young, dead. It seemed so meaningless.