People who have experienced the three-year famine have a deep experience of hunger, have a heartfelt awe for food, and will never waste a grain.
Modern people have almost no concept of hunger, just as the so-called full man does not know the hunger, and the body in the blessing does not know the blessing.
During the famine years, tens of thousands of people starved to death. People who have no food to eat are hungry, and if they can have bran, wild vegetables, grass roots, and bark, even if it is a good life.
So, how hungry can people be in famine years?
During the three-year famine, after eating all the "good things" mentioned above, people began to eat some strange things that were not even eaten by livestock in order to be able to fill their stomachs.
The first is Guanyin clay, that is, white mud containing a lot of alumina, this soil is relatively delicate, looks like flour from the senses, but in fact has no nutrients.
But there is only one benefit, that is, eating can make people feel full, making people forget about hunger. The biggest disadvantage is that it is not easy to digest, it is difficult to excrete, and many hungry people are swollen to death.
By the time it was time to eat the soil, the grass roots and bark had already been eaten. 90% of the families in the village rely on Guanyin soil to feed themselves, and the nearby mountains can no longer dig soil.
After the Guanyin soil is dug back, it must be treated with water, grinding, and then infiltrated with pumpkin flowers and wild vegetables to make steamed buns to eat, just to fill the stomach.
Many people suffered stomach swelling due to eating Guanyin soil, unable to excrete, and finally swollen to death.
The second is to eat snakes, insects, rats and ants. According to records, in the area of Gansu, some people are really hungry, so they can only beat some mice and lizards in the warehouse, cook them to fill their hunger.
By eating these things, you can at least live a few more days and not starve to death soon. In the Gangu area, many families survive by beating rats to eat.
During the famine years, there was simply not so much to manage, and everything that could be eaten or not would be eaten. Some people were hungry with coals, and the whole circle of the bed board was eaten a lot.
In Henan, the famine is particularly serious, many people are hungry only to lie down, full of energy, it is difficult to raise their heads, can only turn their heads to gnaw the wood on the bed to fill their hunger.
Also, wild goose poop is also a hungry thing, and many people soak the picked up wild goose feces with water, decant the water, make cakes and cook them in the pot.
Some people are so hungry that they simply put it in the pot to dry and eat it. The whitish part of the goose poop cannot be eaten, only the greenish part, which is undigested wheat seedlings.
The wild goose is quite good, in the area of Fuping, Shaanxi, some people are hungry and even look for grains to eat in cow and horse manure. In addition to these, there are quite a few cruel things.
Hungry people are hungry, and poisoning is common after eating these food substitutes. Many leaves, bark and wild vegetables contain toxins.
In Dingxi, Gansu, most people can only boil and drink grain soup, and they are so hungry that they can only lie down, and they dare not go to the kang to drink water, because they no longer have the strength to go to the kang.
Especially in winter, once the kang does not come up, it will freeze to death on the ground. At first, it can be sustained by drinking soup, but then slowly it will be exhausted and Venus will appear.
Adults have no food to eat, children have no milk, and eventually they have to die of hunger. People with a little strength will go out to beg for food for their families, and their lives and deaths are uncertain.
Those who remain at home can only lie weakly on the kang, and death will come at any time. When people are hungry to a certain extent, they may not even have the strength to drink saliva.
As long as the person who lies down, he no longer has the strength to stand up, and even if he has food, he may not be able to save his life. The most immediate manifestation of hunger is extreme weakness.
In a memoir, I saw that the whole family lay on the kang, and the only person in good condition went down to get water, crawling back and forth, and only half a bowl of water was left.
How hungry can you be in famine years? This is a kind of pain that modern people cannot experience, that is, the kind of hunger that kills people, so hungry that you are paralyzed and your eyes are sparkling.
In the era of abundant food and clothing, people should not forget the famine years of the past, the importance of food is self-evident, it is urgent to save food and eliminate all waste.