In the late 1950s—during the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962)—the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a bold but tragic experiment. Free communal canteens were set up across the nation as part of the people’s commune system, meant to embody Chairman Mao Zedong’s dream of a classless society. In these canteens, private kitchens were abolished, and neighbors ate from the same pot in the name of equality. What began as an idealistic vision to speed China’s path toward communism soon turned catastrophic, helping to trigger the Great Chinese Famine that claimed millions of lives.
My mother often told me stories about those years—the communal canteens, the hunger, the despair. In 1958, she left her poor village for the capital city, beginning her apprenticeship in a big steel mill. She was only twenty then, full of hope, believing she was building a new and brighter China. I guess that’s one reason why she liked to tell those stories time and again. Beneath the hardship and loss, they held the memory of her youth—of dreams that once felt boundless before they were broken by history.
The Big Socialist Food Hall
My mother often began her story the same way: “At that time, every household donated their woks and pots to the Communist Party.”
As a child, I always asked, “Why?”
“To make steel,” she would answer patiently.
“Why?” I asked again.
She would look at me with a gentle smile before speaking of Chairman Mao. He had told the Chinese people that to catch up with the superpowers — the United States and the United Kingdom, the nation needed iron. Every family was ordered to surrender their woks, pots, and any scrap of metal they owned so the government could melt them down and make steel that was meant to forge automobiles, ships, and skyscrapers.
To me, it was hard to imagine our old kitchenware turning into something grand and shining. But to my mother, it was a memory of faith—of people believing that sacrifice could build a nation.
Then her story shifted. “We all went to the big socialist food hall,” she said. Mao called the communal canteen the big socialist food hall. He had declared that socialism was the first stage of communism and that, through three years of socialist movements, China would transform into a fully communist nation.
My mother told me, “Families, children, and adults—we all ate three meals a day in the big socialist food hall. Everyone believed what Mao said: that soon we wouldn’t have to work so hard for so little, and we would all live happily in a communist country.” Mao’s propaganda filled the air with promises of endless, free food for everyone.
“In the beginning, the food was good,” she said softly, “but it lasted only two weeks.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because there was no food anymore,” she replied, her voice slipping into a strange mix of disbelief and sorrow.
When I asked again — another “Why?” — she often turned away to her housework, as if silence could keep the memories from returning. The truth was simple: in many communes, six months’ worth of grain had been eaten in less than one.
Hot Water Tinted with Soy Sauce for Supper
My mother could not stand to see food wasted. We ate everything with chopsticks, even rice. When I was seven or eight, grains often slipped from my bowl onto the table. My mother would make me pick up each one and eat it. Then, as if reminded of something far away, she would begin another of her remembered stories.
My mother seemed extremely harsh with me and my brother when we wasted food, largely because she had experienced real hunger during Mao’s time. “After the Great Leap, we had three years of Natural Disaster,” she would begin, using the official phrases of the time.
The “Great Leap” referred to Mao’s grand but illusory plan to turn China from a socialist nation into a communist one within three years and to close the economic gap with the United States. The so-called “Three Years of Natural Disaster” was, in truth, a man-made tragedy. There were no great floods or droughts during that time.
I learned this only years later, long after I had left China. Growing up, I had known only the Party’s version of events—a story wrapped in slogans and silence. It wasn’t until I read Western media sources that I understood what my mother’s pauses and half-finished sentences had tried to say. The famine had not come from the heavens, but from human hands and blind belief.
During the famine, my mother worked in a steel mill. To keep laborers at their posts, the government provided only meager rations—perhaps a small dinner roll a day, or a bowl of thin soup made with a few grains and a great deal of water. I wish I could ask her for more details now, but sadly, she passed away this February.
“Every night, we went to bed hungry,” she once told me. Hunger, she said, made it impossible to sleep. “We often cut a tiny piece from a block of dried soy sauce paste, dropped it into hot water, and drank it before bed. We had to rise early for work. My legs were often swollen from the salt in that soy-flavored water.”
“Sometimes, on our way to work, we saw someone collapse on the road—dead from hunger,” she said quietly. Between the spring of 1959 and the end of 1961, about 30 million Chinese starved to death.
Life Before and After “Liberation”
Mao and the Communist Party used the word “liberation” to describe 1949, the year they took control of China. In CCP propaganda, the “liberation army” freed the people from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, and Mao saved the nation from poverty, capitalist exploitation, and oppression.
My mother often began her stories the same way: “Before liberation…” That phrase meant the years of her childhood. She liked to talk about her mother—my grandmother—who was born into an affluent family that once owned land.
“Your grandma used to have beautiful jewelry,” my mother would say. “Pure silver bracelets and earrings. When she married, her parents gave her carved wood furniture and fine porcelains from the Qing dynasty.”
But when I picture my grandmother, my memory is very different from those stories. In the early 1970s, during my visits, her house was nearly bare. Only one old dressing table remained—its paint peeling, its mirror cracked. Her “porcelain collection” had dwindled to a single blue-and-white ceramic cat, which she used as a pillow.
“After liberation, the campaign against the rich and landlords took everything away. That’s why you never saw those treasures in your grandma’s house.” My mother could always sense my unspoken questions.
“Your grandma used to have her own vegetable garden,” my mother would say with pride. “She had such a green thumb—tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers. Everything grew beautifully. Our table was always covered with fresh vegetables, and she even raised chickens. We never worried about food.”
Then her tone would change.
“But the village officials came one day and said private gardens and poultry were forbidden. ‘The land doesn’t belong to you,’ they told her. ‘All land belongs to the government.’” My mother’s voice would rise despite her effort to stay calm. “They destroyed everything in your grandma’s garden.”
From Shared Meals to Shared Suffering: When Ideology Replaces Humanity
The communal canteens—designed by the Chinese Communist Party—eliminated private kitchens and placed all food production under state control. Families were no longer allowed to cook for themselves or store food at home. Farmers could not keep the small emergency reserves that had sustained rural families for generations. Fearing confiscation, many peasants consumed their remaining grain quickly, afraid that anything left in their homes would be seized.
During the Great Leap Forward, local officials felt enormous pressure to report extraordinary harvests to meet Mao’s unrealistic production quotas. False reports of record crops flowed up the hierarchy. The state believed the inflated numbers and demanded tax grain accordingly. Officials, terrified of appearing disloyal or incapable, seized grain from villages—even when it meant taking the last sacks from homes and communal storage.
Overconsumption in the canteens, forced grain collection, and catastrophic mismanagement collided. By the winter of 1959, food shortages spread across the countryside. By 1961, millions were starving.
My mother lived through it.
She remembered lining up for meals at the canteen—thin soup, sometimes only a few grains floating in water. Workers fainted at their stations. People collapsed on the roadside, too weak to continue walking.
At home, she remembered her mother—my grandmother—once proud of her garden that had fed the family with fresh vegetables: tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers. The village officials tore it all down. “Private land does not exist,” they declared. The chickens disappeared, the vegetables were uprooted, the tools confiscated.
From shared meals to shared suffering, the promise of abundance became the reality of hunger.
My mother often paused when she told these stories. I could sense what she wanted to say: “When the government controls everything, people have nothing.”
Yet, she never spoke those words aloud.
She was afraid that if I, a child, repeated them, someone might report her. One careless sentence could mean trouble for the entire family—interrogation, punishment, even prison.
So instead, she said the safe words everyone was expected to repeat:
“Without Chairman Mao, we would have had no food and would have starved to death.”
Her voice sounded practiced—almost rehearsed. It was the script the government wanted everyone to believe. But beneath it, I could hear the words she didn’t dare say.
My mother never joined the Communist Party. Whenever people asked her why, she would answer quietly, almost apologetically: “I’m just an ordinary person. I have no ambition.”
I realize now that humility was her shield. And without ever planning it, I inherited her legacy—I never joined the Party either.
This blog is dedicated to my mother. She passed away this year. I miss her every day.