In the villages, a China still living in want
Zhou Xun says more than 50 years after the Great Leap Forward, parts of rural China that survived the famine continue to live in poverty, seemingly untouched by the country's spectacular boom
While the coastal cities of China and its people have benefited from the economic reforms of the past three decades, in many parts of rural inland China, peasants continue to live in dire poverty.
Between 2006 and 2010, I travelled across the Chinese countryside to interview survivors of the Great Leap Forward famine. The Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) was Mao Zedong's dream for leading China into a communist utopia. Like all utopian projects of the 20th century, it was doomed to fail.
It led to a devastating famine throughout China, which was to last three or more years, claiming millions of lives. It also led to mass destruction of agriculture, industry, trade, and every aspect of human life, leaving large parts of the countryside scarred forever by man-made environmental disasters.
To a large extent, the destruction of the Great Leap Forward continues to exercise an influence on everyday life in the countryside even to this day. I was often struck by the level of poverty in rural China.
More than 50 years after the famine, the lives of those who survived have improved very little.
In 1958, the rural population in China was forced to sacrifice homes and possessions in order to build socialist collectives, but today many survivors of the famine are still left without homes, health care and, sometimes, food. It may be hard to believe in today's China that there are still a fair number of people suffering from starvation.