Conversation in the Langdan｜Region
(November 1, 1958)

This year’s harvest has been bountiful—are the common folk happy? They’ve asked for a couple of days off, haven’t they? It seems this has become an issue. I think two days off a month, doing nothing at all during the break, would amount to just twenty-four days a year—not too much. After November, give them a week off to rest up properly. Is this worth considering as a problem? Think it over. (Interjection: The steel hurdle hasn’t been cleared yet—we still need to push through another month of intensive work. Right now it’s a cycle of a few days’ preparation, a few days’ assault.) Preparation for a few days, assault for a few days—if steel works like this, can agriculture follow suit too? When can the cotton harvest in agriculture be wrapped up? (Interjection: The cotton bolls haven’t opened yet; it’ll take more than a month.) If the bolls haven’t opened by then, maybe they just aren’t ready to open. Leave those remaining tasks for the kids to handle. It’s tense right now—arrange shifts for rest. Can they be given two or three days off in November? Are the masses expressing any discontent? (Interjection: One issue is exhaustion, another is poor food—there’s some grumbling among the people.) Right! One is eating cold meals without vegetables; another is the nurseries; another is sheer fatigue—three problems. Adults and children need to eat, and after eating, they’ve got to work.

What’s the income level here? (Interjection: On average, eighty yuan.) Any cases exceeding a hundred yuan? (Interjection: There are some at a hundred and thirty yuan.) What’s the lowest? (Interjection: Forty-five yuan.) At forty-five yuan, after covering food, there’s nothing left, is there? (Interjection: At forty-five yuan, after food, there’s no wages left.) How many cooperatives here can’t pay wages? (Interjection: Six cooperatives can’t manage it.) Is it because cash crops are too scarce? (Interjection: They all have cash crops.) You don’t have any cooperatives that don’t produce cash crops—what are they exactly? Cotton, pears, Sichuan pepper, raising pigs—that counts too,

Conversation in the Langdan~ Region
as a cash crop, doesn’t it? Chickens and ducks too, right? If you’ve got surplus grain, you can raise more—whatever you can’t finish can be exported.

So you’ve merged two districts—nine counties and one city—that puts you on par with Shijiazhuang. Last year, your grain output was 2.2 billion jin; this year it’s 7 billion jin. Doubling it would be 4.4 billion jin, so you’ve more than doubled it twice over. Four hundred jin per person isn’t enough for eating here, is it? Do people still pay for meals here, or not? What’s the grain production target for next year? (Interjection: The plan is 17 billion jin.) You’ve got ten million mu of wheat this year—how much was it last year? (Interjection: Seven million mu.) Seven million mu, and this year all ten million mu got basal fertilizer, right? Later, you’ll need top-dressing too. How much seed is sown per mu? (Interjection: Over twenty-five jin for ninety-five percent of it.) What’s the yield per mu? Here you’ve got “two whites and two blacks”—the whites are cotton and wheat, the blacks are steel and coal. You’re planting five million mu of cotton—what about green hemp or other cash crops? Where do vegetables come from for planting? Do the dining halls here serve meals with vegetables? Can you manage meat twice a month? You need one pig per person—if a pig weighs a hundred jin, that averages six liang of meat a day, so you could eat meat daily.
(Interjection: After collectivization, the number of pigs dropped a bit.) Did they die or were they sold off? The pigs need a bit of a better life too, don’t they? Next year, a thousand jin per mu—eight hundred jin would already be decent. What was the wheat yield per mu this year? (Interjection: Two hundred and two jin.) Next year, three hundred and two jin would be satisfactory.
(Interjection describes the hundred-li high-yield corridor plan in Linzhang County, targeting five thousand jin per mu.) How far is Linzhang from here—are the roads good? Traveling by train doesn’t offer much of a view out the window—it’s a ride for old gentlemen. Taking a car would be more scenic.

Isn’t there a county around here that refuses to leap forward? (Interjection: Not here—it’s Shijiaoting County, and the white flag’s been pulled down.) With a white flag, of course there’d be no leaping forward.

You’ve got ten million mu of wheat, with a large-scale high yield of two hundred fifty jin. Who’s managing these high-yield plots—is it the youth shock brigades? Are there older folks involved too? (Interjection: There are youth teams and also Mu Guiying squads, She Taijun squads.) She Taijun squads, eh? There’s real spirit in that. Spread these high-yield methods—once promoted, just follow their approach. Then you could shrink your planting area to four million mu. At ten thousand jin per mu, that’s forty billion jin. Using this method to reduce the planting area is good—

Compare it to this table: don’t plant the ends, just concentrate on the middle section. That saves water, saves fertilizer, saves labor. This policy was put forward by Hebei Province. In the past, it was shallow plowing and rough cultivation—wide planting, thin harvests. Now we need intensive cultivation, planting less but reaping more.

If you plant four million mu of wheat at ten thousand jin per mu, that’s forty billion jin. With six and a half million people, forty billion jin would be more than you could eat, right? You could cut half the table—plow it three chi deep—and let the rest rest for a year. When I was in Anhui Province, I saw them burning fertilizer everywhere, piling up roots and weeds into heaps—they called it “smoking the fields.” Let the land rest, let the sun bake it, break it down, smoke it—I think we should move in this direction. At Beidaihe, I proposed cultivating just half the land, planting grass and trees on the rest, and digging ponds for fish where there’s no water. In the future, the issue won’t be too little land but too much—planting less but getting more. Deep plowing just means going three or four chi down. Intensive cultivation is nothing more than intertilling, top-dressing, watering, pest control—that whole set. Planting less to reap more means sowing one mu to harvest ten thousand jin. For thousands of years, it’s been shallow plowing and rough cultivation—wide planting, thin harvests.

Add mechanization to the list. You’ve got steel here—do you have a machinery plant? (Interjection: There’s a small one.) Can it produce tractors? (Interjection: Can’t make tractors.) You’re not thinking big enough! Isn’t it fine without tractors? Use ropes, and later switch to steel cables for traction. Fertilizer—do we really need foreign chemical fertilizers, or will local organic ones do? I think organic fertilizers benefit crops more. The excrement of people and animals—you press green manure with something, don’t you? (Answer: Amorpha fruticosa.) Can this replace foreign chemical fertilizer? You can rely on it next year. Should our country basically forgo tractors—just use a few, not go full tractorization? Same with foreign chemical fertilizer—most of it’s unnecessary; limit it to a small amount for crops that specifically need it. This is what I’m putting up for discussion. I see yields of ten thousand jin per mu without foreign chemical fertilizer. The Soviet Union gets a hundred eighty-five jin with it; we hit ten thousand jin without it. Tractors are the same. Local fertilizer is foreign fertilizer: first, the excrement of people and animals; second, pressed green manure; third, locally made fertilizers—all of these count as chemical fertilizers. (Interjection: The entire prefecture has two hundred thirty thousand chemical fertilizer plants.) Good! Let’s get the local masses working on it—it’s better than foreign fertilizer.

At Beidaihe, the proposal was one-third for crops, two-thirds for grass and trees. Trees have huge economic value—

Conversation in the Jidan~ Region
timber is a chemical raw material; we can plant more of it.

Maybe we should scale back on tractors but still aim for mechanization—use other forms, Chinese-style forms. Reducing reliance on foreign chemical fertilizer can also be treated as a question for consideration. Must mechanization necessarily go through tractors? Must fertilizer necessarily go through foreign chemical methods? Human and animal waste, green manure, locally made fertilizer, tearing down kang beds and walls, dredging river mud—there’s plenty of it all!

How heavy is your steel task? (Interjection: Eleven million fifty thousand tons, seventy thousand tons of steel.) Where do your raw materials for steel come from? What’s low-carbon steel—how much carbon does it contain? (Interjection: Unclear—they say it was smelted here as early as the Yuan dynasty.) How do you know it’s from the Yuan dynasty? How much ore do you have here? (Interjection: Prospecting shows—number unclear—tons.) With sixty percent iron content, that’s—unclear—tons of iron. Have you gotten clearer on the mineral reserves these last two months? (Interjection: Everywhere they say there’s ore, but it’s getting harder to figure out exactly how much.) From muddled to clear—using iron to build terraced fields, walls, pave roads—see how rich our country is? The very soil is iron; don’t mine ore, just dig the earth!

Do you have copper deposits here? (Interjection: Thoroughly prospected reserves amount to—unclear—ten thousand tons.) If there’s copper, then produce some copper!

One last issue: organize labor better—complete the tasks while eating well and resting well. Is that possible? To liberate women, who should we pick to educate the children? The youth aren’t keen on it—assign the elderly. What’s more important: steel production, or the little ones? Or wheat and cotton? This is about the next generation. Nurseries must be distinctly better than home care to showcase the superiority of the People’s Communes. If they’re just about the same, the superiority won’t be visible. This is a major matter. Every province, prefecture, and county must pay attention to the next generation. We’ll work another ten years—someone’s got to take over, right? We must raise these children, a quarter of the population, well. In the nurseries, they should fare better than with their parents at home.

Next is meals: first, having food; second, eating well. No cold meals—hot food with vegetables, oil, and salt, better than what they’d get at home or in small kitchens. Only then will peasants welcome eating from the communal pot. Rank the dining halls—Category 1, 2, 3—pick a Category 1 hall as a model,

and have the others measure up to it.
(Interjection: She County has a dining hall where cornmeal dishes don’t repeat for half a month—very well run.) That’s excellent! Treat this as a big deal. Eating is labor power—breakfast fuels the midday workforce, lunch fuels the afternoon, dinner fuels tomorrow’s. Eat well; if you don’t, there’s no labor power.

Then there’s the issue of rest. Issue an order: rest, get enough sleep. People need to eat, people need to sleep. Aren’t we militarized now? Give the order to sleep—take a midday nap. Research it, what do you think? Sleeping outdoors in winter’s too cold, but spring, summer, autumn are fine. If you deny them rest, the people won’t stand for it. Right now, how many hours do they average for sleep? Issue an order for at least six hours—after resting, you’ll have even more strength. Work increases, efficiency goes up.

Eat well, sleep well, care for the children well.
The children must be fed well, taught well, managed well. You’ve got six and a half million people—twenty-five percent is one-point-six million. That’s a huge army of toddlers. Some only see things, not people—steel’s a thing, cotton’s a thing. Ignoring the toddler army is seeing things, not people. Nurseries must be superior to home care. If they’re just about the same, they’ll collapse—it’d be a wonder if they didn’t. Same with dining halls—if they don’t offer better food than home, they’ll collapse too.

If laborers don’t sleep enough, everything else is lost. Sleep is also a private matter! Let them nap for an hour at noon. Aren’t you militarized? Battalion and company commanders should meet once—good commanders care about their soldiers, tuck them in with a blanket. Don’t stick to just five hours of sleep—let them have seven hours, okay? Not sleeping won’t do. Sleep is a task; enforce it by order—the masses would welcome that. Treat this as an issue for study; no decision has been made.

Where cash crops are insufficient, where there are no wages or low wages paid, cash crops should be developed. Every cooperative should plant some cash crops with exchange value. Wages shouldn’t be just one or two yuan—they should be higher. If we get to communism and it’s still this meager, what’s the point? Capitalism, after all, has more than we do.

A Conversation in Yurui District

Your commune here has about ten thousand households on average. This place was the State of Zhao in ancient times, where Lord Pingyuan resided. (An interlocutor: There is also the Lane of Returning Chariot here.) Even Lian Po and Lin Xiangru would turn their chariots around to avoid conflict. Yet some of our cadres are not united and won’t even turn their chariots around — they are not even as good as those two!

What difficult problems do you have? (An interlocutor: We are heavily engaged in indigenous steelmaking, autumn harvest and wheat planting, and using labor for reservoir construction, leaving the masses unable to rest.) With three major tasks and 4.5 million laborers, how can this be better organized? As for small indigenous methods, do a little. Sleep — you absolutely must ensure seven hours a day. This is a task. You give it a try first. The problem of children — no one wants to manage people. Those in normal colleges do not want to teach. This is putting the cart before the horse. They prefer managing things over managing people. It’s truly puzzling. I would like to be an elementary school teacher, to care for the children. If they cannot sleep well, you must see the consequences; in a few years there will be repercussions. Tough struggle — sleeping is one of the tasks of tough struggle. Meals must be sufficient and good, and sleep must be seven hours. Try it out and see how you accomplish the tasks. I don’t think that with less sleep you necessarily fail to complete the tasks. First secretaries of provincial, municipal, prefectural, and county party committees must grasp matters concerning people — all these are matters concerning people.

Military-style organization: in some places there is coercion and commandism; in some places a battalion commander can beat a company commander. Beating, scolding, tying people up, and also debating — disputation has become a form of punishment. These are laws for the enemy; do not confuse the enemy with ourselves. In our Red Army and Eighth Route Army, officers did not beat soldiers, did not execute deserters by shooting, did not strike prisoners, and were amiable to the common people. Do these places of yours have incidents of beating, scolding, and binding people? Debating is not the same as struggling against Rightists. It is clear that the distinction between contradictions with the enemy and contradictions among the people has not been made clear. Do not coerce the people into submission. As for the enemy, apart from those counterrevolutionaries, even ordinary landlords, rich peasants, and Rightists are not to be beaten — much less can we beat and scold people among the people. If beatings have already occurred, do not pour cold water everywhere. Just ensure no more beatings in the future; if it is corrected later, that’s acceptable, for those who beat people did so to accomplish state tasks. Explain this clearly and the masses will understand. Among the people, we must proceed from unity, through struggle, to achieve unity on a new basis. This is the method for resolving contradictions among the people. Coercion and commandism may get things done for the moment, but people are not convinced in their hearts. Just watch — once we leave, they may stop working altogether.