Guangshan

— In a small village in Guangshan county in Henan, Mrs Liu Xiaohua, now aged 65, still vividly remembers the events of thirty-six years ago. One afternoon in 1994, perched on a small footstool, dressed in faded blue cotton trousers and smock, and occasionally smoking a cigarette, she recalled what had happened. On the muddy path leading from her village, dozens of corpses lay unburied. In the barren fields there were others; and amongst the dead, the survivors crawled slowly on their hands and knees searching for wild grass seeds to eat. In the ponds and ditches people squatted in the mud hunting for frogs and trying to gather weeds.