Words about “eat”
Double-steamed rice: After the rice is steamed with water for the first Time, it is steamed again with water, so that the volume can be increased by tens of percent.
Vegetables and gourds: fruits and vegetables are used as the main Food instead of grain.
Mixed noodles: 80 percent coarse grains and 20 percent wheat noodles.
Substitute food: crop-based substitute food to all kinds of crops straw, leaves, roots, skin, shells, etc. made into a substitute food. Such as composting corn husks in a large pool, after a few days of soaking, stirring, precipitation, the bottom of the pool will appear starch.
Wild food substitutes: all kinds of plant pegs, roots, leaves, stems, skins, fruits, etc., such as elm leaves, bark, acacia leaves and the like.
Chlorella, red duckweed and other phytoplankton: July 6, 1960, “People’s Daily” editorial: Chlorella is not only a very good concentrate feed, but also has a high food value. Some people use chlorella powder to feed babies, the effect is comparable to milk powder.
Synthetic food substitutes: such as “artificial meat essence”, “artificial meat”, leaf protein, etc.
Suhu is ripe and the world is full. This legend was recited from the Southern Song Dynasty and came to an abrupt end in 1960.
In that year, natural disasters also affected Jiangsu. The southern part of Jiangsu, the land of fish and rice, was under the heavy weight of history, but also seemed to have a lack of energy. In the rural areas of Suzhou, which were called “paradise on earth”, many people were still suffering from puffiness due to malnutrition.
Food rationing
At the beginning of 1958, Li He-yun, who had already passed his prime, was sent down to Louchu Commune (now Louchu Town), a suburb of Suzhou, to receive labor training in the Caojiatian Production Team of Jinshe Brigade.
This year, Suzhou City rolled up a wave of “three gate cadres” decentralization. “The first thing you need to do is to go out of your Home and into your school, or out of your school and into your institution. They also had to work and rest with the peasants and eat in the same canteen.
“The days of decentralization were not hard to bear, at least there was no need to cook.” As time passes, 88-year-old Li He-yun smiles as he recalls the days of 50 years ago, revealing the only few remaining teeth.
In 1958, the members of the Lou Turnip Commune were given their own fields under the unified arrangement of the production team, and just in time for the great iron and steel refining, the pots and pans of the members’ homes were smashed, and “even the shovels for cooking were taken away”. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services. When it was time for the three meals a day, the members brought their own bowls and pots and utensils to the canteen and took them home to eat.
At that time, Li He-yun had to pay the production team 9 yuan and 60 cents per month for food and 25 pounds of food stamps. If you have an urban account, an ordinary adult’s monthly food ration is about 27 catties, university professors, senior actors, cadres of grade 13 or above, there is also a monthly senior oil ticket of half a catty, which is of a “care” nature.
In the beginning, the commune canteen did not limit the amount of meals, especially the evening meal, the members of the community after a day of farm work, are eating belly bulging, “walking is not convenient.
But this good Life did not last long, the canteen will soon run out of time. Due to the low harvest, food became tight.
The “cat’s meow” of cooking
At that time, the slogan of “let go of your belly and eat” was launched in the countryside. However, everyone said so, but in their hearts they understood: this kind of life can not be long.
This day, with Li He-yun together with the decentralized cadres group leader presented Jian Yi led everyone with the production captain, accounting, calculating the daily food consumption, feel that in the long run, the team rations will occur serious shortage. But no one dared to say it openly.
After discussion, we decided to promote awareness of conservation to the community members. At the same time, a multi-pronged approach was taken to mobilize the cooks to use their brains to try to improve the “meal rate”.
The “meal rate” has become a historical term. But Li He-yun clearly remembers the “foul” of the canteen: the rice is fried before cooking, the rice expands with heat, and then water is added to make rice to increase the volume. There is also the “double-steamed rice”, the first time the rice is steamed with water, add water and then steamed again, so that the volume can increase by tens of percent.
However, these methods are not top hunger, eat a while stomach “screaming”, the community members do not have the energy to work, affecting attendance. So, the canteen thought of a compromise solution to stabilize the rate of water release of rice, both to avoid the rice is too thin to affect the work of the community members, but also to avoid cooking too dry, increasing the consumption of food.
And in the north of Jiangsu, a river away from Suzhou, there are commune canteens introduced “double-steamed nest”. It is first steamed corn flour, scalded with boiling water, made into nests and steamed again. The steamed nest is so soft that it can’t be picked up by hand, so you have to use a spatula. There is also a so-called “three cooked rice”, simply not steamed rice, but “hair” rice like hair noodles. When cooking rice first steamed, cooked into a porridge, fished out and steamed again. In this way, a grain of rice can be as big as a soybean.
During the three years of hardship, the Suzhou area was not yet greatly affected. As a state cadre, Li He-yun basically had no problem with the supply of staple food, and could eat all the rice and noodles, only the supply of side food was not available. Due to the limited supply of bean curd, eggs and vegetables, he soon got swelling disease due to malnutrition, “his face was bright and shiny, and he couldn’t get up for half a day when he pressed a pit.”
What should I do if I have swelling disease? “What kind of disease is this? There is no need to take Medicine.” With the disease, Li He-yun does not panic, he knows that as long as he can increase a little nutrition, he can reduce the swelling recovery. Only those who could not replenish their nutrition in time would eventually die of heart failure.
According to the regulations at that time, the production team took Li He-yun’s case together with the statistics and reported it to the hierarchy. Soon, the superiors approved some additional fish, meat and eggs, etc. Li He-yun could have half a catty of fish and a few taels of meat every day, and after eating continuously for a period of time, his swelling disease was cured.
“The rural areas of Suzhou would be slightly tougher, but this hardship was also mainly reflected in the reduction of side dishes.” Li He-yun said that farmers still had their own land back then, and could grow rice as well as some cash crops, so they could still eat enough.
But only enough to eat. Some farmers also want to raise pigs, poultry, but suffer from a shortage of feed, can only think about it.
Eating bran bun can not shit
In 1961, Li He-yun was transferred to the commune and became a statistical cadre. This gave him a better understanding of the situation in the rural areas of Suzhou during the three years of hardship.
“At that time, there were many people suffering from swelling disease”, in Li He-yun’s impression, during the three years of hardship, there was no starvation death in Suzhou area. The situation was more or less the same in the entire southern Jiangsu region, including Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou, as well as Zhenjiang and Nanjing – whether in the cities or in the countryside, there was no problem in getting enough to eat, only a severe shortage of foodstuffs.
But in northern Jiangsu, the situation is much worse. In those days, the fate of individuals was almost out of their control. Li He-yun’s friend Wang Bei (a pseudonym), because he was single, was sent down to Xuzhou, a region in northern Jiangsu, to teach. “He didn’t want to go very much, but there was no way, the orders of his superiors could not be disobeyed.”
Wang Bei’s experience of being sent down from Suzhou to Xuzhou was beyond Li He-yun’s imagination. Wang Bei came to visit him a few times, always in tears when talking about the hardships. In Xuzhou rural areas, farmers often eat is mixed with elm bark flour bran bun. People scrape off the black part of the outside of the elm bark, the inside of the white skin dried, pounded, ground into powder, and rice bran or flour mixed together to make steamed buns or noodles. This kind of noodles taste very good, fine and smooth. But it has a deadly place, eat down after the bowel movement is very difficult. “Sometimes squatting a few days and nights can not pull out, no choice, had to pick with their hands, using hard objects to pull out, and finally get bloody.” This makes Wang Bei, who is a scholar, feel very humiliated.
In the three years of economic hardship, the “paradise on earth” of Suhang really can not starve to death. In 1962, Wang Bei saw a lot of horse manure on the road in a commune in northern Jiangsu Province. Where did the horses come from in the commune? People told him: it was human manure, not horse manure, “because long-term eating bark and grass roots, human gastrointestinal functions are on par with horses.”
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