Modern times are very popular "crossing drama", but in fact, a person travels to ancient times, the probability that its living conditions will be much lower than the current grade, after all, the development of industrial society for 200 years, modern productivity is far from ancient can be compared. The quality of life of one of the most ordinary commoners in modern society is likely to be higher than that of small and medium-sized landlords in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and here is the simplest example: grain. With today's development situation in China, even if the economic conditions are difficult, there is still no problem in eating fine grains. However, at any time in China before the 1990s, for more than 90% of the people, this was an absolute luxury, and even in many periods, grain would become a luxury that many people could not reach. In 1943, in today's Guangdong Province, there was a large-scale famine tragedy.
Guangdong Province, China's number one province, could hardly have imagined such a tragedy in 1943.
In fact, since the end of the Qing Dynasty, the contradiction between man and land in China has been very acute, and the excessive population has made the land bearing in various places to the limit, the ecology is on the verge of collapse, and famine occurs frequently. Although Guangdong Province is now rich and a developed province in the 1930s and 1940s, the problem of insufficient food has always existed, and at that time, tens of millions of stones of rice grain were imported from other provinces and overseas every year, and the food crisis was imminent. Finally, in 1943, the contradiction broke out completely.
Beginning in the summer of 1942, storms in 64 counties and cities in the province led to a large number of rice harvest failures, and many farmers were miserable and could only expect late rice; then, strangely enough, from the winter of 1942, the climate of Guangdong Province began to be abnormal, until May 1943, Guangdong Province received very little rainfall, and 80% of the province's arable land production was reduced or even harvested. As a result, grain prices in Guangdong Province soared.
But after all, it is Guangdong, where foreign trade is developed and there are many goods, and some problems can still be solved through trade when encountering this situation in normal times. However, this was 1942, when the Japanese devils came, the channels for foreign grain imports were cut off, and the Japanese army plundered in Guangdong on a large scale, "feeding the war with war", the transportation in various places was not smooth, the remittance of overseas Chinese was difficult, and hundreds of industries withered away. And what about the officials of the Guotong District and the Wang Puppet Control Zone? Corruption is rife and there is no expectation that they will solve the problem.
Southern Guangdong catastrophe
Under the natural and man-made disasters, in 1943, the situation finally could not be stopped, 80 of the 97 counties in Guangdong reported disasters, and since late March, the grain prices in most parts of Guangdong have risen more than 5 times compared with the winter of 1942, and ordinary people simply cannot afford it. A large number of residents starved to death, and the situation of "cannibalism" was even more common. The meat buns of zhuhai hotels have been found more than once in the fingernails of children, an elderly man living alone in Doumen County has killed and cooked the children of foreign hungry people and cooked them as dog meat for sale, taishan, Guangzhou, Xinhui and other places, there are records of killing children as "civet meat", "fragrant meat", "beef brisket" and so on. In Meixian County, there were even hooligans who sold human flesh who were shot. The last time there was a tragedy of "cannibalism" in Guangdong was in the Guangdong famine of 1648, 300 years ago.
According to statistics, in 1943, more than 3 million people died of famine in Guangdong Province, accounting for 1/10 of the province's population. The population of Guangdong Province was 32,427,600 in 1934, and fell to 31,786,700 in 1943 at the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan.
Among the regions of Guangdong, the most serious loss is the Chaoshan region.
There are several reasons why Chaoshan was most affected.
First, the contradiction between man and land is sharp, and the contradiction between the Chaoshan Plain is not much, and the contradiction between the number of people and the small number of people is sharper than that in the Pearl River Delta and other places. Before the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Chaoshan seriously needed to import rice from Southeast Asia; after the Japanese army occupied Chaoshan, it blocked shipping, the grain lifeline in Chaoshan was cut off, commerce was monopolized by Japanese-funded companies, and materials were in short supply. In addition, the Japanese army also controlled the sea area, did not allow fishermen to go to sea to fish, and sank fishing boats, and the fishing industry was also hit. The number of overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia is extremely large, and the income from overseas Chinese remittances originally accounted for a large proportion of the economy, but due to the war, overseas Chinese remittances were cut off, and what is worse is that hundreds of thousands of overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia have returned, the population has surged, and the grain supply has become more and more tense.
As a result, the Chaoshan area was extremely miserable, and the people of Shantou City were forced to rob the remaining grains from the dung of Japanese military horses and horses to wash their stomachs. Hungry people dig up Guanyin mud powder, fern roots, etc. to fill their hunger. Nearly 100 people die of starvation every day in Shantou City, 120,000 people die in Huilai County, more than 80,000 people die in Raoping County, and the death toll in Chaoshan Area is conservatively estimated to be more than 500,000.
The Guangfu area also suffered heavy losses, Zhongshan County Xiaolan Town was originally a rich town with 90,000 residents, only 30,000 were left at the time of land reform after liberation, 120,000 people in Xinhui County starved to death 40,000, and the population of Shunde County was about 600,000, except for 20%, less than half of the survivors survived.
The Chaoshan people opened the "Dongxing Overseas Chinese Approval Road" and transported resources from the Guangxi port, saving many people
A large number of residents began to flee, about 300,000 people joined the fleeing army, according to the "Chaozhou Chronicle", at that time, it was heard that gannan was sparsely populated and easy to obtain food, so a large number of Chaoshan people helped the old and the young to flee to Jiangxi, but the long distance coupled with the torture of hunger and fatigue, many people died in the middle of the road ("abandoning the baby, the illness and death on the way to shock the eye" - "Guangdong Province Chronicle"), there are 170,000 Chaoshan people who fled to Jiangxi. There are 100,000-200,000 people who have fled into western Fujian, most of whom are children who have been sold or sent by their parents. This even changed the demographic structure of many places in Jiangxi, at that time, there were 18 counties in Ganzhou, almost all counties had Guangdong refugee groups, Guangdong refugees even fled to Ji'an, and even now 1/5 of the people in Taihe County are Cantonese or Guangdong descendants. Many of them will never be able to return to their homeland for the rest of their lives.
The 83-year-old Chen Xianying (Chen Ezhang) is photographed with her children, a refugee who fled to Jiangxi at that time, and although her memory is vague, she remembers that her brother looks very similar to her son and hopes that her Relatives in Chaoshan will recognize her.
And this tragic history is still a hidden pain in the hearts of many elderly people in Guangdong.
"In the year of 1943, the spring drought was really miserable, there was no rice in the field, no rice was starved to death, no rice was dug at the bottom of the ditch, no drip came out of the spring, and the feet were crazy and soft and crying and looking at the sky" - Shantou Chenghai folk song.
Author: Yun Fan