Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China's Great Leap Forward and Famine (Contemporary Chinese Studies) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0774817267 ISBN 13: 9780774817264

Publisher: UBC Press, 2011

Synopsis

When the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, Mao Zedong declared that "not even one person shall die of hunger." Yet some 30 million peasants died of starvation and exhaustion during the Great Leap Forward. Eating Bitterness reveals how men and women in rural and urban settings experienced the changes brought on by the party leaders' attempts to modernize China. This landmark volume lifts the curtain of party propaganda to expose the suffering of citizens and the deeply-contested nature of state-society relations in Maoist China.

About this title

Book Description:

Eating Bitterness lifts the curtain of officially propagated images of the Great Leap Forward to expose the social suffering of citizens and the uneven and deeply contested nature of state-society relations in Maoist China.

From the Inside Flap:

When the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, Mao Zedong declared that "not even one person shall die of hunger." Yet some 30 million peasants died of starvation and exhaustion during the Great Leap Forward. Eating Bitterness reveals how men and women in rural and urban settings, from the provincial level to the grassroots, experienced the changes brought on by the party leaders' attempts to modernize China. This landmark volume lifts the curtain of party propaganda to expose the suffering of citizens and the deeply-contested nature of state-society relations in Maoist China.

About this edition

• Publisher: UBC Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0774817267
• ISBN 13: 9780774817264
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Manning Kimberley Ens