Ren rou (人肉)

“Ren rou” (人肉): The direct translation is “human meat.” This term is used in the Chinese context to describe the consumption of human flesh during periods of famine.

Mao Zedong’s policy during the implementation of the five-year economic plan known as the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) adhered to the slogans: more, better, faster, and cheaper. Mao aimed to make China a leading industrial power in the world at any cost. The implementation of the Great Leap Forward caused unprecedented devastation in every area of the economy, with rural areas being the most severely affected. The countryside was subjected to forced collectivization, with the confiscation of farmers’ property and their consolidation into gigantic people’s communes, where food was distributed in communal dining halls based on merit. Various types of “substitute foods” were introduced, such as paper mache. Soon, a famine of unprecedented scale swept across China, the likes of which the world had never seen before.

“In Anhui Province, Mao’s experiments ended in a hell of suffering and death. Official party documents show that entire villages starved. Those who survived the longest resorted to cannibalism. The worst part was that parents had to decide who would die first,” the report stated. “Usually, the youngest girls were chosen, while boys lived the longest.”*1

Parents who could not bring themselves to eat their own child collaborated with neighbors, exchanging children for consumption.

A mother told her daughter: “Soon, you will visit your grandmother in heaven.” Then she was no longer fed and was given only water. When the girl died, her body was exchanged for the body of a deceased neighbor’s child so that the parents would not have to eat their own child. The meat was cooked and used to make soup.

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* “Mao. The Empire of Suffering” by Torbjørn Færøvik