Unmasking China’s Great Leap Forward and Great Famine (1958-1962) Through Shunkouliu (顺口溜)

Abstract

Satiric Shunkouliu (顺口溜), an oral folklore tradition among Chinese peasants known as “slippery jingles” or “doggerels,” express discontent and often contain disguised critiques of official propaganda. In this article, I call upon Shunkouliu to expose the reality behind the dogma during China’s Great Leap Forward and Great Famine (1958-1962). This departs from existing scholarship that has focused on written texts and interviews as primary data. Analyzing Shunkouliu demonstrates the collective efforts of Chinese peasants in speaking the truth. Through its satiric and disruptive qualities, Shunkouliu challenged official rhetoric by making erased realities visible and silenced voices audible. Recognizing Shunkouliu as legitimate data also challenges positivist criteria (representativeness and sample size) in assessing data credibility. I conclude this article by urging qualitative practitioners in the global South to explore forms of data beyond those traditionally examined within the parameters of qualitative research originating in the global North.

Keywords

Shunkouliu Great Leap Forward and Great Famine official rhetoric global South data

Introduction

China’s Great Leap Forward (GLF, 1958-62) was a massive social, political, and economic experiment by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who intended to use China’s vast population to rapidly transform the country and its agrarian economy to a modern, industrialized communist utopia. The GLF has since been recognized as a colossal policy failure that was largely responsible for the Great Famine (GF), which killed an estimated 15 to 45 million people. Scholars seeking a comprehensive understanding of the true scope and nature of the disaster face two interconnected challenges: (a) The CCP has continued to deny its responsibility and to downplay the catastrophic scope of the nationwide famine, and (b) scholars are faced with formidable barriers to accessing data. Even though China’s archival system keeps comprehensive historical documents, accessing these data is hampered by constant changes in China’s political climate and irregular institutional practices. The CCP’s overt and covert censorship also makes it extremely difficult to obtain eyewitness accounts through interviews or unpublished printed memoirs.

This article will contribute to scholarship in the area by first conducting a methodological review to examine the ways in which data are considered and presented in scholarship about the GLF and GF. I will illustrate how some sinologists use a factual approach to simultaneously denounce the CCP state and reveal the reality of the disastrous calamity. These scholars have relied on interviews, memoirs, and archival documents to demonstrate peasant’s severe suffering and determine accurate death tolls. But by speaking about suffering on behalf of the peasants, this scholarship has inadvertently represented them, especially rural women, as helpless victims. Other researchers, in contrast, have been compelled to interrogate their own blind spots and assumptions in an effort to understand how individuals and local communities survived the calamity. The reflective, decentering journey taken by these scholars underscores the methodological complexity and challenge in “seeking the truth” through data collected using fieldwork and in-depth interviews. With respect to methodology, it is essential to ask what might get missed by focusing on written texts and interviews to understand China’s GLF and GF.

I explore this question by using Shunkouliu (顺口溜), an oral folklore tradition created by Chinese peasants, as primary data. Recognizing Shunkouliu as a legitimate source of data in seeking the truth about the GLF and GF can decenter normative conceptualizations of what “counts” as data in this area. Most accounts of this period rely on written texts and interview data; because Shunkouliu was an oral tradition among a largely illiterate population, few have been preserved. The majority of those we know about were included in cadre member’s official reports denouncing them. Focusing on Shunkouliu also provides a challenge to the CCP’s official rhetoric about the GLF and GF—rhetoric that is continuously being upheld via abundantly accessible data circulated in books, pamphlets, and visual images. As I will show, Shunkouliu, rhyming in their oral dissemination and satirical and disruptive in content, “talk back” to official rhetoric by capturing the lived realities and tormented outcries that have been relentlessly deleted and silenced by the CCP state. They offer an alternative perspective into the experiences of peasants, who clearly used this satiric form as a strategy for resistance and resilience.

This article contributes to the Special Issue that examines the concepts of data in neoliberal times. Echoing calls by Denzin and Glardian (2017) who argue that it is “no longer possible to speak of a monolithic model of qualitative inquiry,” this article integrates the forms and debates surrounding data in qualitative inquiry. By examining the politics of “truth seeking” through Shunkouliu in the Chinese context, the article serves as an example of combating neoliberalism that sanctions dogma yardsticks to assess scholarly work in general and to delegitimize nonnumerical data in social science inquiry in particular (Koro-Ljungberg, Cirell, Gong, & Tesar, 2017).

Seeking Truth Through Data: A Methodological Review

Over the last decade, sinologists have made concerted efforts to uncover the truth about the GLF and GF. As noted, this work has two distinctive methodological focuses: (a) confronting the denials of the CCP state and unveiling the scope of the nationwide famine; (b) understanding how individuals and local communities survived the calamity. As I demonstrate next, the former has relied on a fact-based approach, while the latter entails a reflective and decentering methodological journey.

A Fact-Based Approach

Many sinologists have sought to determine the exact death toll and precise accounts to prove the scope of the nationwide famine, thus challenging the CCP’s denial of its responsibility (Becker, 1996; Dikotter, 2010; Song & Ding, 2009). To accomplish this objective, they have tackled seemingly insurmountable obstacles in data collection. Although the Chinese government declassifies archival data after 30 or 50 years, access to these data is subject to arbitrary institutional practices and a constantly shifting political climate.¹ Overt and covert censorship by the CCP state further hinders soliciting informants for in-depth interviews and collecting printed but unpublished memoirs.

In this context, sinologists have presented primary data from interviews, published and unpublished memoirs, and archival documents as eye witness accounts. For example, Jisheng Yang (2008), author of the two-volume Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine (1958-1962), begins his book by recalling how he witnessed his father’s starvation and ultimate death.² Other scholars have assembled interview data to determine the death toll of the informant’s immediate family and, in some cases, to offer gruesome details about starvation or cannibalism.³ To expose the CCP’s abuse and brutality, these researchers repeatedly include lengthy details about torture, interrogation tactics, and sexual assaults on women.⁴ These depictions of passive victims starkly contrast with the researchers’ active voices as they provide commentary in which they explicitly voice their indignation and unambiguous accusations against the CCP.

Dikotter (2010), for example, explicitly condemns Mao by titling his book Mao’s Famine. In contrast, Yang chose the title Tombstone to commemorate his father and the estimated 36 million Chinese who died of starvation during the GLF. Yang’s “tombstone” is also a symbolic denunciation of the inevitable destiny of the political system responsible for the famine and signifies the personal risk he assumed in pursuing a historical project that vilifies the CCP state (J. Yang, 2008, p. 5). Xiguang Yu, editor of a two-volume book of letters petitioning the famine and bureaucratic abuses, called the book Shangshu Ji (Collection of Grieving Letters). The title references a tradition in imperial China where a commoner would direct a grievance to the emperor, with the expectation that once the emperor learned about the true nature of the matter, he would benevolently right the wrong (Yu, 2005).

Scholars using the fact-based approach to reveal the true scope and nature of the GLF and GF have been critiqued for their reliance on limited and/or nonrepresentative data as well as for their inability to reach definitive figures on the death toll (Garnaut, 2013). But no one has questioned the ethics involved with respect to confidentiality and anonymity when the names, addresses, and even photos of the informants have been published by researchers to validate the use of their eye witness accounts (J. Yang, 2008). Nor has anyone problematized how these eyewitness accounts have been used by researchers to depict the informants, especially women, as powerless victims. Also of concern is the fact that scholars’ heavy reliance on written records reveals only a partial truth because these documents were authored by people with literacy proficiency for people with similar literacy levels. Being able to document their observed realities in writing for others who relied on written text as a means of communication was a skill held by only a small minority at the time. Although these texts are an invaluable source of data, it is essential to stress that China’s literacy rate in the 1950s was only an estimated 15% to 20%. This means that when starving peasants wanted to reach out to their distant relatives for support, they had to find and pay a literate villager to write a letter on their behalf (J. Yang, 2008). Thus, the written text was not the primary means of daily communication for the majority of Chinese, especially those in rural China, and nor should it be used as the primary source to understand local realities.

A Reflective, Decentering Journey

Rather than directing attention to trauma, suffering, and starvation, two scholars set out to understand how individuals and local communities survived the famine. Using fieldwork and in-depth interviews, they accomplished their objectives only after going through a reflective, decentering journey to confront their own methodological blind spots.

Wangling Gao, a Chinese social historian, has studied resistance and survival strategies of peasants to understand why the death tools were not actually higher given the dire circumstance of the GF. As a young intellectual in the 1960s and 1970s, he spent years in the countryside being “re-educated.” To investigate resistance and survival strategies used by peasants during the GLF, Gao returned to the village he had spent time in as a youth. Despite his familiarity with the villagers, he was unable to even begin conversations about resistance and survival because he knew only their politically charged terms, which were once used by the CCP state to incriminate and suppress local discontent. It was only after repeated, extended visits over the course of several years that Gao was able to learn how his former villagers interpreted their own survival strategies and positions in relation to the state’s top-down control, and what he needed to do as a researcher to understand the layers of meanings, actions, and inactions of the villagers (Gao, 2006).⁵

For feminist historian, Gail Hershatter, the challenge was how to even begin exploring the unknown through in-depth interviews because she did not know what to ask. Through her attempts to understand the history of the GLF from the perspective of rural women, Hershatter realized that her informants would not offer information beyond what she directly asked them: As one of informant said when asked why she had not mentioned her performances with the Chinese opera in prior interviews, “I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t ask me about” (Hershatter, 2011, p. 22). It was only after Hershatter adopted a radically different approach to her research that she was able to uncover her informants’ previously hidden realities. Hershatter had been using a chronological framework dictated by major political events and campaigns to frame her research. But with the help of Xiaoxian Gao, a native and renowned historian turned feminist scholar and NGO activist, she was able to put this aside and slowly piece together an alternative framework used by Chinese rural women to narrate the meanings of GLF and GF from their vantage point.

Adopting this alternative framework allowed Hershatter and Gao to come to new understandings. For example, for rural women, public canteens were unsustainable not simply because of well-known official abuses and mismanagement but also because they disrupted social relations and the cultural fabric of local communities: Collective dining made it impossible for individual families to have a modest wedding banquet or a dining gathering with friends or relatives. Also, despite rural women’s vulnerability as victims of sexual assault, their resilience and resourcefulness were vital to familial survival. For example, they actively traded shoes, yarn, and clothes for grain, wild vegetables, and sweet potatoes produced by farmers in remote mountain areas left unreachable by the state. Also, as men were drafted to work in steel smelting and irrigation projects, rural women also became the primary agricultural labor to realize the state’s utopian experiment. Their narratives about the time included descriptions of backbreaking labor and undelivered state promises that were officially said to relieve them from their reproductive responsibility.

Methodologically speaking, both Gao and Hershatter went through a reflective and decentering journey in probing for truth through data. For decades, Chinese academic researchers have wondered whether peasants “tell the truth” and considered “how to make them” tell the truth (Fei, 1995; Li, 1933, 1935), but with the exception of Hershatter and Gao, insufficient attention has been paid to the processes and practices of truth finding in relation to data. Gao’s decentering effort entailed abandoning campaign language and official slogans that had been used to prosecute famers struggling to survive the famine. Hershatter’s decentering was to replace, with the help of X. Gao, the politically dictated framework with an alternative scheme meaningful to rural women. The comment, “I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t ask me about” (Hershatter, 2011, p. 22) should not be construed as disrespect from the informant. Instead, it is a constant, humbling reminder for qualitative researchers to consider what might get missed in focusing on written texts or interviews as primary data to unmask China’s GLF and GF.

A Decentering Methodological Intervention

Against the backdrop of existing scholarship on the GLF and GF, I will show how calling upon Shunkouliu as a unique source of primary data decenters normative methodologies in three ways.

First, recognizing Shunkouliu as primary data challenges the positivist claim made by critics of the fact-based approach who uphold representativeness and/or sample size as the only yardstick to assess data credibility. The legitimacy of Shunkouliu as data is not established through its size or by a representative sampling scheme. Instead, Shunkouliu’s legitimacy is demonstrated by its inclusion in official reports by local bureaucrats as criminal evidence of antigovernment elements in local communities. This unique context of data preservation makes Shunkouliu a legitimate and untapped source of data with which to examine local discontent.

Second, qualitative practitioners need to exploit diverse sources of data and interrogate how data are presented in seeking the truth. Turning to Shunkouliu as primary data is premised upon the fact that the transmission of messages orally was the dominant means of communication at a time when an estimated 75% to 80% of the Chinese population was illiterate. The collective, anonymous nature of Shunkouliu also avoids ethical issues regarding confidentiality and anonymity.

Third, paying attention to the satiric attributes of Shunkouliu portrays the active voice and agency of the peasants in condemning and resisting the policies and conditions affecting them. This contrasts with previous portrayals of them as objectified victims. My analysis will demonstrate how Shunkouliu can effectively reveal realities and protestations that were relentlessly axed from and silenced in the official rhetoric. As an oral folklore tradition, Shunkouliu not only testifies to the existence of a subaltern space amid the CCP’s hegemonic discursive regime but also presents an effective set of data to transgress and penetrate the stifling official slogans and rhetoric upheld by the CCP.

Disrupting the Official Rhetoric

In contrast to constraining access to primary data as described earlier, publications revealing and supporting official rhetoric are abundant and readily available. For example, the People’s Daily and Hongqi Magazine include hundreds of fabricated reports about the extraordinary accomplishments of the GLF. Many reports exaggerate agricultural production (e.g., “Macheng Jianguo Commune Is the World’s Number One Rice Production Site”; Jizhe, 1958), overstate local support for agricultural collectivization and public canteens (e.g., “Endless Merit About the Commune”; Wang, 1959), and maintain that there was endless enthusiasm from the general public for various aspects of the GLF campaign (e.g., “Immeasurable Strength of the Masses”; Yin, 1958). Books and pamphlets published by national and local People’s Daily from the era corroborate official slogans and rhetoric, and doctored images and composite photographs reveal massive propaganda campaigns glorifying the success of agricultural experiments. Widely displayed murals also provide a window into how these campaigns operated in the countryside. For example, this mural (Figure 1) outside a village depicted hog raising.

Figure 1.

16 Mural of the Great Leap Forward.

With an adult and little girl riding the gigantic pig, the caption declared:

Raising a pig as big as an elephant, 肥猪赛大象

Although its nose is not as long as an elephant’s, 就是鼻子短

When it’s slaughtered; 全社杀一口

An entire commune can feast on it for half a year. 足够吃半年 (Chen & Wen, 2010, p. 124)

It was common for this sort of image to be accompanied by an official slogan from among the many that were widely circulating at the time promoting the socialist experiment. The most infamous official slogan, “how daring people are; how much the field yields,” (人有多大胆，地有多大产) contains an ideologically based logic that makes every individual accountable for socialism’s success. The discursive logic attributes the nation’s level of agricultural production, a tangible measurement, to its people’s willpower, an intangible state of mind. Such a rhetorical regime pressured provincial bureaucrats and local cadres to not only prove their loyalty to the CCP state but also compete for the national spotlight as contributing to the nation’s success. It also opened the door to arbitrary abuses and coercive practices as ways to convert and revolutionize the “backward masses.”

As I discussed earlier, scholars using the fact-based approach have used diverse sources of data to retrospectively denounce the CCP state and to document the effects of the famine on behalf of the peasants. But insufficient attention has been paid to understand how Chinese peasants positioned themselves vis-à-vis the official discursive regime at the time. Nor has an effective methodological strategy that can unravel the CCP’s hegemonic regime at the discursive level been identified. This has allowed the vast amount of readily accessible data to “speak for” the peasants and perpetuate the discursive regime of the CCP state.

My use of Shunkouliu as primary data to tackle the official rhetoric is part of my larger work about truth-making during the GLF in which I am particularly interested in how “truth” was constructed, contested, and disseminated during the GLF and GF (Hsiung, 2015b). I have paid particular attention to how differently positioned individuals or groups negotiated contradictory realities resulting from the CCP’s hegemonic regime. I have observed that a carefully guarded space exists between the official rhetoric and observed reality. For example, academics “sent down” to the countryside for truth finding missions were confronted with irreconcilable gaps between officially constructed “truths” and live realities.

Zisong Wang wrote about this issue in his recollections about his experiences in the countryside during the GLF where he spent time as a part of a group of intellectuals being “re-educated” in manual labor. While visiting Gaocheng county, they stopped into the exhibition gallery of the GLF, which housed displays of statistics, pictures, and charts demonstrating the success of the CCP’s endeavors. There, Wang was stunned by a photo that showed a “gigantic sweet potato bigger than a staircase”—a clear contradiction between the “truth” according to the CCP and reality. He recollected that even though the staff informed him that the photo was a composite done in a studio, he left the exhibition with “many unanswered questions” (Wang, 2005, p. 14). Once they had settled into village life, Wang and his research team realized that the peasants also had to address contradictory realities. For example, Wang remembered how villagers replied to their query about productivity levels: when working alongside his fellow villager, Wang asked him about his productivity level, the peasant replied,

Do you want me to tell you the correct answer or real answer? If you want to know the correct answer, then it would be two thousand grain per mu. The real answer would be two hundred grain per mu. (Wang, 2005, p. 14)

Wang’s fellow villager was fully aware of the official line but also took the risk to provide a glimpse of his informed reality. Such exchanges with villagers and the exhibition gallery staff show that they were able to skillfully preserve their own impartiality as informed observers while engaging in the rhetoric of the CCP state. The staff did this by revealing the behind-the-scenes effort to make the photo composite; the villager did so by juxtaposing the “correct” with the “real” answer.

Shunkouliu, which I discuss next, also exist in the space between official rhetoric and observed, or in this case, lived reality. Below, I demonstrate how peasants used Shunkouliu to collectively talk back to official rhetoric by exposing the deception, capturing their lived realities, and providing commentary on their suffering.

Shunkouliu (顺口溜) as Satiric and Subversive Data

The term Shunkouliu (顺口溜) literally means oral, rhythmic lyric. It is a vernacular style of folklore consisting of short sentences and punctuated by rhythmic intonation. Its content is satiric, humorous, and/or offensive, depending on its topic and context. While some trace Shunkouliu to Dayou Zhang’s dayoushi (打油诗, limerick) to the Tang dynasty (618-907AD), the literary lineage of Shunkouliu has yet to be fully examined or established (Ji, 2004; Link, 2013; G. Yang & Jiang, 2015). In modern China, Shunkouliu are part of a broader comic culture entailing dynamic forms of sociopolitical critique. For example, at the turn of the 20th century, Chinese artists, writers, and cultural entrepreneurs infused their writing with sarcasm and derision to produce various forms of satiric comedy (C. Rea, 2015). Through comedy, Rea argues, China’s cultural elites were able to exploit and articulate the unspeakable fear, anxiety, and misery being experienced by society at large as China struggled to gain its footing in a drastically changing world plagued by perennial social unrest, endless battles among domestic warlords, and external attacks by imperialist forces.

Shunkouliu shares sarcasm and wit with the cultural forms analyzed by Rea; however, it is created and circulated by “the masses” and not the elites. In contrast to the elite culture Rea focuses on, Shunkouliu is particularly powerful because it was an anonymous and collective cultural practice intended to subvert what Link refers to as a “bifocal” language system that emerged during China’s GLF. According to Link, this bifocal language emerged when the CCP’s official discourse began to present a distinctive “truth” that was not congruent with observed reality (Link, 2013). Although the masses diligently learned to master the official discourse to avoid missteps that could suggest political deviance, the informal, nonofficial language proliferated. As part of this bifocal language system, Shunkouliu showcases the distinction between official and unofficial truth through opposing lines or stanzas.

For the purpose of this article, I include samples of Shunkouliu that mock the GLF and provide commentary on the GF although others, uncritical of the CCP, exist from this period.⁶ In the original internal official reports, Shunkouliu were categorized as hearsay, unfounded rumors, or vicious attacks leveled against the CCP state and its utopian agenda. These reports also dismissed the credibility of those creating and sharing Shunkouliu by characterizing them as either rich peasants or anti-revolutionaries. People caught composing or spreading these Shunkouliu were prosecuted.⁷ It is particularly telling that local officials who included Shunkouliu in reports to their superiors made more overt efforts to discredit them, for example, by stating that a particular Shunkouliu about food shortage was the result of mismanagement of an individual brigade rather than an indication of widespread famine.⁸

Given this context, and censorship practiced by the CCP state, it is impossible to accurately estimate how widespread the tradition was at the time or how many Shunkouliu were circulating. In printed, archival documents, satiric Shunkouliu are few in number especially in comparison with those supporting the CCP’s official slogans. The fact that they were included in reports from more than one village and across various time periods suggests that satiric Shunkouliu were not an isolated tradition. As a means of communication and meaning making, the form was uniquely significant among the large illiterate population. Methodologically speaking, I argue that satiric Shunkouliu should be recognized as invaluable data not because plenty of them are available but exactly because very few of them have been left behind.

Shunkouliu (顺口溜) as Subversive Lexicon

The topics of Shunkouliu include political campaigns of GLF and resulting famine.

Two political campaigns inspired the majority of critical Shunkouliu: the campaign to establish “backyard furnaces” in every commune to quickly increase steel production, and the campaign to introduce collectivization through communes and public canteens. The Shunkouliu focusing on these projects used the lyric form to highlight how the programs affected the lives of the peasants, especially aspects of their lives that were excluded from the political slogans. Other Shunkouliu took aim at the hypocrisy and moral failings of the state officials.

Re-presenting erased realities

One essential aspect of Shunkouliu is their representation of realities excluded from the pervasive official rhetoric. For example, counter to the official slogan, “how daring people are; how much the field yields,” (人有多大胆，地有多高产), the following Shunkouliu depicted a different reality based on the knowledge and experiences of the peasants:

It’s ten o’clock in the morning; 早上十点钟;

We’re about to start working.大家才出工.

Before everyone’s arrived; 人还没到齐;

We’re already starved. 肚儿又发空 (Shi, 1998a)⁹

This Shunkouliu mocked a new agricultural regime introduced by the CCP. Prior to the land reforms, peasants went to the field before dawn. After finishing pre-dawn tasks, they returned home for a full breakfast, caught their breath, and then carried out other routines for the rest of the day. Under the new regime, villagers were organized by the head of the brigade according to an externally imposed schedule that typically began after sunrise. Under this new directive, peasants continued to work the same field, but they no longer owned their labor nor controlled when or how they worked. Moreover, they were no longer able to fulfill their family’s needs through their labor. Instead, they were organized to cultivate land that belonged to the collective and their labor was appropriated by the state for its nation-building objectives. By saying that villagers only got ready for the field by 10 o’clock, the Shunkouliu represented this new, politically orchestrated practice that disrupted a traditional routine that had organized the work and lives of rural Chinese for generations. The Shunkouliu hinted at the dragging and delay of getting everyone together—in opposition to the official rhetoric that the masses were eager and willing participants. It sarcastically noted that by the time everyone was ready for their daily labor, hunger had already set in and people were experiencing starvation. This rhyme reveals prevalent local realities, while ironically displaying the ways in which the reform was failing. It suggests that peasants questioned the purpose of going to the field when the state took the yield and reflected the daily hunger experienced by agricultural laborers. It may also reflect the peasant’s knowledge about how much work was actually needed to tend the crops to make a living and avoid starvation. Overall, it captured many local realities erased from the official rhetoric and reveals that the peasants were not just ill-fated victims or eager supporters of the new regime.

With the change of work habits, also came changes in dining patterns. The public canteen was central to rural collectivization, requiring that individuals cease cooking and eating in family units and, instead, eat together in a collective. To advance the establishment of public canteens, the official slogan declared, “Public canteen is at the heart of the people’s commune.” As the central organ of CCP’s experiment of communist utopia, immense effort was made to proclaim the virtue and success of public canteens. In contrast, the following Shunkouliu juxtaposes official rhetoric lauding the public canteen with the reality of insufficient food:

Public canteens are great! 公共食堂好;

But they never fill the plate. 天天吃不饱.

Public canteens are great! 公共食堂好;

But your hunger they won’t sate.大家吃不饱. (Zhonggong Henan Shengwei Dangshi Yanjiushibian, 2006, p. 365)

This Shunkouliu establishes an ironic tension between the rhetorical utopian promise and the intolerable, daily suffering endured by the collective whose livelihood relied on the state’s promise. This Shunkouliu establishes its satiric critique by using the actual official discourse, “public canteens are great,” to expose and ridicule it.

Another particularly unsuccessful experiment was the introduction of backyard furnaces. To industrialize the countryside, the CCP encouraged the establishment of small backyard furnaces in every commune and urban neighborhood to produce high-quality steel and to increase national steel production level. Pots, pans, hinges, locks, and other artifacts were donated and confiscated from individual households to provide “scrap” for the backyard furnaces. To fuel the furnaces, trees were cut and wood was taken from the doors and furniture of peasant’s houses. Agricultural workers were also diverted from the harvest to help with steel production. Despite the effort, however, these small-scale smelting operations only produced low-quality lumps of “pig iron” with no economic value. This experience is captured by the following two Shunkouliu:

Great Leap Forward, a daring deadly move; 大跃进是大要命;

Pots, pans, ladles, and spoons, all removed. 锅碗瓢勺都收尽.

Making steel is what we are meant to do; 全民炼钢;

Trees are felled as part of this too; 树木砍光

But not even iron is made; 铁没炼出;

And the future destruction is laid.后人遭殃. (Shi, 1998b)

The first Shunkouliu subverts the most infamous official slogan, “how daring people are; how much the field yields” (人有多大胆，地有多高产), by calling the GLF a deadly political risk. It attacks and redefines the GLF through unmistakable indignation. By subverting this slogan it challenges the primary political campaign meant to improve daily living. As a whole, this Shunkouliu puts in tension the virtue of “daring” so often praised in the official slogans, with the word “deadly,” contrasting the rhetorical virtue with the lived reality that was deadly for the peasants. It also brings together the large scope of the reforms as a bold and daring move with the mundane effects on peasants of having their metal cooking implements confiscated and removed.

The second Shunkouliu begins by identifying the campaign’s intended scope of mobilizing the entire population for steel production. It then establishes the catastrophic effects of the campaign on the rural countryside. The notion that “Not even iron is made” is a definitive assessment of failure of the backyard furnace campaign. This is followed by proclaiming the disastrous outcome for future generations. This Shunkouliu uniquely laments the more immediate effects the state-building project on the villagers but also directs attention to its effects on the environment and on future generations.

Shunkouliu often combine observations about starvation with commentary about the specific political campaigns that contributed to it. Referring again to the backyard furnace campaign, the following Shunkouliu tells of the peasants’ houses being demolished to build the small smelting plants. This Shunkouliu also provides commentary about the public canteen campaign. With the collectivization of food preparation in public canteens, food became scarce and individuals had no control over the food in the “pot”:

No house on the lot; 进家无房;

No rice in the pot; 掀锅无粮.

Tightening our belts; 勒紧腰带;

To meet the King of Hell. 等着见阎王. (Zhonggong Hebei-sheng Shenghuo Bangongshi, 1961)

In its short, precise account, this Shunkouliu identifies three conspicuous realities in the countryside-demolished houses, food impoverished, and hunger. It concludes with the calamitous effects of the GLF in starvation.

Articulating alternative positions

As illustrated in the mural included earlier, a major feature of the GLF was the proliferation of disinformation. Provincial bureaucrats and local cadres felt pressure to prove their loyalty to the CCP state by demonstrating that they managed to (over)achieve their localities’ production targets. The pressure to compete for the national spotlight led to outrageous exaggeration in productive statistics.

My analysis of Shunkouliu demonstrated that peasants clearly understood the “doublespeak” around them: The discrepancy between the official reporting and the lived reality is reported in several of the Shunkouliu. The following Shunkouliu highlights one of the physical symptoms of starvation—the edema (swelling) of the face. To fully appreciate this Shunkouliu, it is important to point out that even though edema was rampant nationwide, the term was censored in official/medical language. Likewise, “hungry” and “starving” were deliberately avoided in everyday conversation.

Edema in my face, you see official numbers; 脸上就是统计表;

My shrunken waist, you see production number. 肚皮就是度量衡. (Shi, 1998b)

This Shunkouliu projects a metaphorical and yet visible reality; edema in the face represents the inflated statistics and shrunken waistlines represent the deceiving scale. Furthermore, rather than measuring the achievement of the GLF using state-produced indicators of agricultural, industrial, and economic outputs, this Shunkouliu asserts alternative measurements in the physical bodies of the peasantry.

The following Shunkouliu is longer than most and brings together multiple elements often found separately in the rhymes. It consists of three sections. Each section presents a different target for critique; the first one focuses on bureaucratic deception, the second on starvation/famine, and the third one on cannibalism. Taking all three sections together, this Shunkouliu explicitly makes the CCP state accountable for starvation and cannibalism:

Not afraid of Heaven; 天不怕;

Not afraid of Hell; 地不怕;

Just afraid of all the lies the officials tell. 就怕政府说。假话

Fighting to inflate our success; 夺高产;

Competing to showcase triumph; 放卫星;

Look at the official’s glorious achievements 饿死社员填满坑.

Look at the peasant’s deadly bereavements

Denouncing the Rightist on the first day; 今反右;

Denouncing the Rightist on the next day;明反右;

The living is fed with the flesh of the dead 反得社员吃人肉.

at the end of the day. (Xue, 2008, p. 4)

“Not afraid of Heaven and not afraid of Hell” is a vernacular expression of Chinese daily language. It is usually followed by a sarcastic blow.¹⁰ Here the state’s deception, one of the most damaging and widespread bureaucratic practices, is singled out as the folly. In contrast, the second and third sections are constructed along a logic of causation where the first part identifies the cause and the final line points to the outcome. Specifically, the second section asserts that starvation/famine was driven by fabricated statistics and the political ethos and the third section attests that cannibalism was precipitated by the Anti-Rightist campaigns during the GLF.

Conclusion

This article examined the politics of seeking “truth” in research endeavors by examining data from China’s GLF and GF. Taking a decentering methodological approach, I shifted attention away from written texts and interviews by recognizing the oral tradition of Shunkouliu as primary data. Legitimizing Shunkouliu as data challenges the positivist preoccupation about representativeness and sample size as the sole criteria in accessing data credibility. It also challenges official responses to this oral tradition that criminalized and discredited those creating and circulating it.

My analysis of Shunkouliu refuted the “truths” constructed through official rhetoric by making erased realities visible and silenced voices audible. It also illustrated the collective effort of the Chinese peasants in speaking their truths and allows us to see beyond their primary characterization as victims to one that includes their role as active and knowing resistors.

In post-Mao China, Shunkouliu has been practiced beyond rural China. Its presence in Internet and digital media stands out as a unique, dynamic satiric discourse. Blocking and/or deleting Internet postings of Shunkouliu that mock political rhetoric and even the CCP leaders has become one of the main responsibilities of the Chinese cyber police. Scholars consider Shunkouliu’s contents and practices significant in sustaining a subaltern voice (C. G. Rea, 2013; G. Yang & Jiang, 2015) in contemporary China. Turning CCP’s propagation of a “harmonious society” (和谐社会hexie shehui) and its proclaimed political legitimacy (三个代表sange daibiao) into images of “river crab wearing watches” (河蟹戴表hexie daibiao) is one of the latest renditions of Shunkouliu (C. G. Rea, 2013).¹¹ To methodologically and epistemologically transgress and infiltrate the stifling hegemonic rhetoric of the CCP state through critical qualitative inquiry is challenging as well as promising.

Practitioners of critical qualitative research have made significant contributions to knowledge production by probing truth through data, but this effort is contingent upon how data are conceptualized, gathered, and presented. By conceptualizing Shunkouliu as primary data, I problematize the politics of truth probing through data. This is particularly relevant for critical qualitative inquiry in the global South where qualitative practitioners have mainly employed ethnography, in-depth interviews, and archival research as means of social science inquiry. To realize a “locally grounded” and “globally informed” research agenda (Hsiung, 2012), it is essential for qualitative practitioners in the global South to explore data beyond the conventional parameters of data. Such an effort contributes to recent calls among qualitative practitioners combating neoliberalism across the North/South divides.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Uwe Flick for organizing a panel on “The Concepts of Data: Challenges in Neo-Liberal Times” at the 12th Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign, 2016. As this Special Issue’s editor, Dr. Flick’s willingness to provide extension makes it possible for me to develop my ideas and sharpen my thinking and writing. This research project benefits from Yu Wang’s research assistance in locating the Shunkouliu. Without his support, it would have been impossible to gain access to many original materials. Sherri Klassen edited earlier versions of this article. Linn Clark provided careful reading and insightful comments on the final versions of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research presented here was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (File Number 435-2017-0347).

Notes

Author Biographies

Ping-Chun Hsiung studies the politics, mechanism, and engendered process of knowledge production and ignorance perpetuation in local and global contexts. She has facilitated and contributed to critical dialogue across the core/periphery, Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal, and science/social sciences divides to advance the interpretative paradigm of social science inquiry. She is currently conducting two research projects. She examines how investigative research was conducted, findings constructed, and policies derived during China’s Great Leap Forward (1958-1962). Working with women’s NGOs, she analyzes how rural women’s participation to local governance is facilitated through transforming cultural and political practices in contemporary China (1995-2015).

Yu Wang is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. His research interests include 20th century China, everyday life, social and cultural history. Currently he is completing his dissertation exploring the roles radio played in the building of everyday life in Mao’s China.

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