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  • Why: Dictator's vision Where: China

    Eating furniture

    INGREDIENTS

    • leather from furniture
    • water

    “We were soaking leather chairs. After soaking, we boiled the leather from them and ate it, cut into tiny pieces.”*

    Mao Zedong’s policy during the implementation of the 5-year economic plan (The Great Leap Forward, 1958-1962) followed the slogans: more, better, faster and cheaper. The village was subject to forced collectivization, confiscating peasants’ property and concentrating them in gigantic people’s communes. There, food was served in communal canteens, allocated on a merit basis. Various types of “substitute foods” have been introduced, as for example in the form of paper pulp. Soon there was a famine across China unlike anything the world had ever seen before, and the exalted villagers ate whatever they could get their hands on: leaves, tree bark, soft skin. Zhu Erge, who witnessed half of his village starving to death, recalled: “We were soaking leather chairs. After soaking, we boiled the leather from them and ate it, cut into tiny pieces.”

    * Frank Dikotter “The Great Famine. The tragic consequences of Mao’s policy. 1958-1962”

    Photo: Kevin Demaria

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