Plaster from walls
“The famine meant that farmers began feeding on their own homes, trading bricks for food, or burning wooden parts to keep warm. If there was still unburned thatch on the roof, it was now removed in desperation and eaten. Villagers also consumed plaster from the walls.”1
During the Great Chinese Famine (1958-1962), people were forced to eat anything that was even remotely edible, including plaster from the walls. Accounts from survivors and researchers indicate that people scraped plaster off the walls and ate it raw, sometimes mixing it with water. Eating plaster was extremely dangerous, as it provided no nutritional value and often led to severe health problems, such as intestinal blockages or poisoning.
Ingredients:
- Plaster from walls
Recipe:
Scrape the plaster from the walls and eat it raw, or mix the plaster with water and consume it as a paste.
During Mao Zedong’s policy implementation of the 5-year economic plan, known as the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), slogans prevailed: more, better, faster, cheaper. Mao wanted at all costs to make China the world’s leading industrial power. The implementation of the Great Leap Forward principles caused unprecedented devastation in every sector of the economy, most drastically affecting rural areas. The countryside was subjected to forced collectivization, confiscating property from peasants and concentrating them in gigantic people’s communes, where food was distributed in communal dining halls according to merit. Various types of “substitute foods” were introduced, such as paper-mâché. Soon, a famine of proportions the world had never seen before swept across China.
