Cannibalism and the Great Famine
People said they were so hungry their chests touched their backs. Anhui Province, about 600 miles south of Beijing, was one of the hardest hit areas. Here bodies sometimes lined the road and reports of cannibalism were common. "Everyday, I would see a corpse," one Anhui farmer told the Los Angeles Times. "Sometimes I recognized them as a neighbor. Often they were strangers."
One survivor told the Los Angeles Times, she lost her 3-year-old daughter and her sister within a few hours of each other. "As I turned to come home, I thought for sure that I would die myself on the way." She then said, "The only thing that saved us was carrots we grew on the riverbanks. We had three old people die from diseases related to starvation. But the carrots saved most of us."
According to a report made available in the West in 1998, there were 63 recorded reports of cannibalism at Fengyang County commune in Anhui.. "In Damiao commune," the report read, "Chen Zhangying and her husband Zhao Xezhen killed and boiled their 8-year-old son Xiao Qing and ate him...In Wudian commune Wang Lanyong not only pick picked up dead people to eat, but also sold two jin [2.2 pounds] from their bodies as pork."