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Tombstone: The Untold Story of Mao's Great Famine [Hardcover]

Yang Jisheng (Author), Stacy Mosher (Translator), Guo Jian (Translator)

4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (58 customer reviews)

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Book Description

Publication Date: 30 Oct 2012

I call this book Tombstone. It is a tombstone for my foster father who died of hunger in 1959, for the 36 million Chinese who also died of hunger, for the system that caused their death, and perhaps for myself for writing this book.'

The most powerful and important Chinese work of recent years, Yang Jisheng's Tombstone is a passionate, moving and angry account of one of the 20th century's most nightmarish events: the killing of an estimated 36 million Chinese in 1958-1961 by starvation or physical abuse. More people died in Mao's Great Famine than in the entire First World War and yet their story remains substantially untold. Now, at last, they can be heard.

Based on survivors' testimonies, this book was greeted with huge acclaim when published in Hong Kong as an essential work of reckoning.

'The man who exposed Mao's secret famine' Financial Times

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Based on survivors' testimonies, this book was greeted with huge acclaim when published in Hong Kong as an essential work of reckoning.

'The man who exposed Mao's secret famine' Financial Times

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Product details

Hardcover: 656 pages
Publisher: Allen Lane (30 Oct 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 184614518X
ISBN-13: 978-1846145186
Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 4.2 cm

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (58 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 155,686 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #21 in Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Social Issues > Ethical Issues > Censorship
- #24 in Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Government & Politics > Civil Liberties & Political Activism > Freedom of Information & Speech

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Review

A book of great importance (Jung Chang, author of 'Wild Swans')

The first proper history of China's great famine ... So thorough is his documentation that some are already calling Yang "China's Solzhenitsyn" (Anne Applebaum, author of 'Gulag: A History')

In 1989 hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Chinese died in the June Fourth massacre in Beijing, and within hours hundreds of millions of people around the world had seen images of it on their television screens. In the late 1950s, also in Communist China, roughly the inverse happened: thirty million or more died while the world, then and now, has hardly noticed. If the cause of the Great Famine had been a natural disaster, this double standard might be more understandable. But the causes, as Yang Jisheng shows in meticulous detail, were political. How can the world not look now? (Perry Link, University of California, Riverside)

Though a sense of deep anger imbues Yang Jisheng's book, it is all the more powerful for its restraint ... Tombstone meticulously demonstrates that the famine was not only vast, but manmade; and not only manmade but political, born of totalitarianism (Tania Branigan Guardian)

Tombstone is not just a history but a political sensation ... rich with details ... there is no doubting Yang Jisheng's immense political courage in compiling and writing it ... His book is not just a tombstone for his father and other famine victims, but for the reputation of the Communist party's leadership at a time when they should have acted (Rana Mitter Guardian)

About the Author

Yang Jisheng was born in 1940. He worked for many years at Xinhua News Agency, until his retirement in 2001. From the early 1990s onwards Yang interviewed survivors and collected records of the Great Famine (1959-61), eventually accumulating some 10 million words of testimony. This was published in Chinese originally in two volumes (the English-language edition is edited down) and has been widely acclaimed as the book that not only preserved many extraordinary and terrible stories but also broke a widespread official silence on the subject. Tombstone remains banned in China.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written, but hard going 16 Aug 2013

By S. Paterson

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine Review (What's this?)

I didnt exactly get what i expected from this book. It's a very tough and deep read and focuses more on the historical and political overview rather than specific sections of the Chinese story.

If you are after something to really push your knowledge and make you an expert on this history topic, then this is the book for you. If you are after an easier to read non-fiction book, this may not be the one for you.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, horrifying 19 April 2013

By George Rodger

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine Review (What's this?)

You wonder why Chairman Mao has escaped the vilification accorded to other mass murdering dictators, and why you can buy t-shirts and kitsch items with his face on them...
An incredible 36-44 million Chinese died in just 4 years, and this superbly-researched book is a powerful testament to the evil of the Communist system, where this horrendous state-caused famine was ignored and covered-up.
It has reams of statistics - but necessary ones, as the story would otherwise be incredible - allied to the personal stories that also beggar belief, like the many cases of cannibalism.
You might also want to read Jung Chang's 'Mao - The Unknown Story', and Frank Dikotter's 'Mao's Great Famine'.

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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Likely to remain an essential text for many years to come 2 Jan 2013

By Lost John TOP 500 REVIEWER VINE VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine Review (What's this?)

Between 1958 and 1962, an estimated 36 million Chinese died of starvation (some estimates are higher). Many of the deaths were concentrated in a six month period through the winter and into the late spring of 1960. Cities and towns were little affected; the famine and the death toll were almost exclusively a phenomenon of the countryside. Those who lived there ate everything available and turned to every possible food substitute; trees were stripped of their bark, and tree and other roots dug up. Still the people died, and the local and central authorities (always themselves well fed) for the most part continued to deny that there was a problem. Measures were implemented to ensure the starving remained in their villages and anyone who attempted to get word out on the scale of the problem was persecuted. Cannibalism, in some cases linked with murder of the not yet dead, was widespread. Whole families, even whole villages, were wiped-out, and an across-the-board mortality rate of 25 per cent was very common.

As with the Terror Famine in the Soviet Union almost 30 years earlier, the immediate reason for starvation in the countryside was excessive procurement of foodstuffs, especially grain, to feed the urban population as it rapidly expanded with industrialisation, also for export to earn foreign currency to finance industrialisation. In 1959 there was also a measure of drought, and throughout the period a number of ill-conceived and seriously damaging policies associated with The Great Leap Forward. These both cut crop production and made it very much more difficult for individual peasant families to feed themselves. Procurements were greater than they might have been in part because of ideologically driven exaggeration of reported crop yields.

It may have been a while before Chairman Mao Zedong fully appreciated that the famine was widespread throughout China, not just in localised pockets, and that the number of deaths was running into the tens of millions, but his reaction is reported at one point to have been that it would be helpful if half the people were to die, as the other half could then eat their fill. Later, he attributed the starvation to the activities of counter-revolutionary elements, and that became the official party line. The administrative structure of the Chinese Communist Party was such that Mao and the central authorities were able to disassociate themselves from negative effects - maintaining the belief among peasants that central government was wise and good and it was only the local cadres who were bad.

Yang Jisheng's foster father (in fact his uncle) died in the famine. Born in 1940, Yang is of peasant stock, but he qualified for a city education and later became a journalist. As a journalist, he sometimes had access to information not widely known, and in due course he began to systematically investigate The Great Famine. In latter years he has also gained access to archives long kept secret. His objective was to create a memorial, or tombstone, for his father and the tens of millions of others who died. This book is that memorial.

Yang's approach is very thorough - to the extent that even though this volume is an abridged version of the Chinese original published in Hong Kong, it is to be feared that many readers will find the relentless catalogue of conditions in each of the worst-hit counties and provinces heavy going. However, that is the book's only fault - if it can fairly be called a fault - and I recommend that if a chapter such as Chapter 6, Hungry Ghosts in Heaven's Pantry, becomes too much, the reader should not give up on the whole book but skip to the end of the chapter and continue with the next. Having finished the book in that way, (s)he will probably in practice return for the rest of the skipped chapter(s), for in total the book is compelling.

Besides setting out in detail the numbers who died - and, in consequence of death and infertility, the even greater number who were not born - Yang looks at food production and availability in the key years, describes the absurdities of The Great Leap Forward and its projects - at the practical as well as the macro level - and provides an overview of the political structure and its workings. In addition to those of Mao, Zhou Enlai (Prime Minister) and Liu Shaoqi (Chairman of the People's Republic of China), Yang follows the career paths of several personalities, Provincial Party Secretaries and others, not well-known in the West. He asks many pertinent questions, and provides clear answers.

Some of his questions are:
* Why, at the time of The Great Leap Forward, did no-one expose the blatant lies of the leapfrogging claims of biologically impossible crop yields?
* Why did tens of millions of people arrive at death's door without being saved?
* Why did the policies that caused starvation continue for three years?
* Why were cadres able to inflict such cruel abuse on peasants?
* Why were most of those who starved the very peasants who produced China's food?
* Why was it possible to keep the catastrophic death of tens of millions secret for half a century?

I have suggested that some readers will find some sections hard going. That being said, besides Yang's own clarity of thought and presentation, the translators and editors have done a superb job of presenting for English language readers a text that is as readable and comprehensible as the huge quantity of information permits. Between them, all concerned have produced a volume that is truly a fitting tombstone to those who died, and that is likely to remain an essential text on the subject for many years to come.

The book has one map - showing the provinces of China - many notes, an extensive bibliography, and is comprehensively indexed. The book's dust jacket design is also worthy of praise, with a back panel photograph of both relevance and arresting beauty, and a striking inside back flap picture of the author that shows him looking very well for his 72 years. Read more ›

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Another vision of Hell under Communism 15 Aug 2013

By G. J. Oxley TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine Review (What's this?)

I'd just tackled Anne Applebaum's superb 'Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-65' and was still reeling from the shock effect of that volume before coming onto this almost equally brilliant book.

The three real monsters of the 20th century: Hitler, Stalin, Mao; each one wishing to control and subjugate huge populations and effectively eliminate anyone at odds with their particular ideologies.

This is the personal, angry account of a man living through the years 1958-1961 when Mao effectively starved to death between 35 and 40 million Chinese.

Think on this figure and consider that it would've been close to the entire population of the UK during that period.

This book describes the nightmare of the times; the despair and complete lack of hope of the citizens. And it's another sharp shock to those who romanticise the benefits of communistic rule.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive work 5 Aug 2013

By Alison TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine Review (What's this?)

I found this book incredibly hard work to read. It covers the horrors of the great famine which are really much worse than I could of imagined, this can make for difficult reading. I don't read about history and politics very often, and this was the main reason I found this book so difficult to read. It is very detailed and obviously full of Chinese names and details. I'm not sure how to pronounce most of those names and with so many similar names, it did make for slow going. This is not a criticism of the book in any way, as a book about China has to include the names and places of China, it is purely a note for those who are not familiar with Chinese history, politics and pronunciation. This is not an introductory text and it may be better for the novice to read something more general about China first; at least I wish I had read something more introductory first, to have a better context and understanding to base this important work upon for my own reading experience.

Tombstone is an important work of great detail, it's message needs to be heard by a wider audience.

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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond Belief 29 Nov 2012

By CJ Craig VINE VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine Review (What's this?)

This has to be one of the most tragic books I have ever read. The sheer scale of the starvation and deception by leaders and cadres is unimaginable. I certainly did not 'enjoy' reading this book but I have learned a tremendous amount and I have wept over man's inhumanity to man. Women, children, the elderly, the disabled and the sick did not even factor into the lack of concern for the Chinese nation. They were the first to be denied food. Their voices silenced.
The Communist ideology that motivated Mao and others to force this devastation on his own people simply falls beyond the ability of comprehension. The numbers are too large to even begin to imagine. This period has to rank as one of the most evil in our times.
Our English translation, which is flawless, is but a fraction of the original Chinese publication. Still, the material presented is more than enough to gain a better insight into this recent period in the life of the Chinese nation. Scholars and China-watchers will benefit immensely from reading and studying this important work. All those who have even a passing interest in China or who are attempting to predict where China is headed will do well to read and imbibe the lessons of history contained in these pages.
This must go down as one of the defining books about China in the twentieth century. It is not hard to see why the book is banned in Mainland China, although it is available in Hong Kong. The new leaders of China would do well to allow the people to read and reflect on the facts revealed in these pages. Surely, the people have a right to know what others around the world now know about the Great Famine of Mao.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A book that needed to be written

The Great Famine was the greatest loss of life in the shortest time in history. The fact that it was an almost purely man-made disaster is laid bare in this book. Read more

Published 1 day ago by M Smithy

4.0 out of 5 stars Shocking

You must prepare yourself before reading the book. Almost 40 million Chinese people died because of one man and his drive to reshape one of the oldest if not the oldest culture in... Read more

Published 6 days ago by B. Bello

4.0 out of 5 stars A Sobering, Personal Account of China's Darkest Hours

Having recently become interested in recent Chinese history following the order of two books detailing crucial chapters in the country's post-30s period (China's War with Japan,... Read more

Published 29 days ago by Thomas Elce

5.0 out of 5 stars Mao.

Having studied a small amount of the vast subject that is Mao's regime, I wanted to learn more. This book contains everything you could want to know, and more. Read more

Published 29 days ago by Flickering Ember

5.0 out of 5 stars Much Needed History

There was one statement in this book that really captured everything - quite simply it is said that there are no famines in countries that have a free press. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Donald Lush

4.0 out of 5 stars A Daunting Read Well Worth It

"Tombstone", coming in at a very heavy 600+ pages, is an imposing read from the moment you see it. This impression is compounded by the first pages of the piece, consisting of maps... Read more

Published 1 month ago by D. R. Aldridge

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow

This is a real eye-opener. My husband goes to China on business quite a bit and I wanted to understand a bit of the background and culture. Read more

Published 1 month ago by zenadox

5.0 out of 5 stars Devastating part of Chinese history.

In just a few months, millions of died of starvation in the Chinese countryside. It was't the first time it's happened and probably won't be the last. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Jim Francis

5.0 out of 5 stars Well researched, well written

This is a well researched and well written text that demonstrates a thorough and meticulous approach on the part of the author. Read more

Published 2 months ago by D. P. Mankin

4.0 out of 5 stars Sobering stuff

I'd known next to nothing about China's so-called 'Great Famine' of the late 1950s before reading this; perhaps not surprising since it's been largely buried by the Chinese, who... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Andrew Sutherland

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