Orphan Testimonies of the Great Chinese Famine

From 1958 to 1960, China was gripped by one of the deadliest man-made disasters in human history. Known as the Three Hard Years, this catastrophic famine claimed between 15 and 55 million lives. It was brought about by authoritarian industrial policies that led to social chaos and devastated the food supply. Once famine struck, strict information control by the communist party prevented news from reaching the outside world and hampered relief efforts. Even today, China’s official history rarely acknowledges the full scale or causes of the years of famine.

Decades afterward, author Yang Xianhui, a native of Gansu — one of the provinces hardest hit — returned to record the stories of survivors. In the Dingxi region, he interviewed more than a hundred orphans of famine, as well as people who rescued and cared for them. Blending oral history with a documentary literary style, he has created a work of fiction rooted in real lives and memories.

Banned in China, this book preserves voices that the state has tried to silence, offering a rare and haunting portrait of endurance, loss, persecution, and the will to survive.