Blain's Farm & Fleet is a regional chain of 38 retail stores in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa.
Even so, work by Yang and others has proved that senior leaders in Beijing knew of the famine as early as 1958. To distribute resources evenly will only ruin the Great Leap Forward, Mao warned colleagues a year later. When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death.
The Chinese famine of 1959-1961. The famine has remained one of the least known episodes of modern history. This is due to the reluctance of Chinese to release information about it and, for many individuals, even to discuss a time remembered as deeply painful.