page_title: Guangxi Massacre
section_title: Massive cannibalism
hierarchical_section_title: Guangxi Massacre / Massive cannibalism
caption_attribution_description: 中文: 中国广西柳州市武宣县，毛主席语录
context_page_description: The Guangxi Massacre, or Guangxi Cultural Revolution Massacre, was a series of events involving lynching and direct massacre in Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution. The official record shows an estimated death toll from 100,000 to 150,000. Methods of slaughter included beheading, beating, live burial, stoning, drowning, boiling, disemboweling, and more. In certain areas including Wuxuan County and Wuming District, massive human cannibalism occurred even though no famine existed; according to public records available, at least 137 people—perhaps hundreds more—were eaten by others and at least thousands of people participated in the cannibalism. Other researchers have pointed out that in a county alone, 421 people had been eaten, and there were reports of cannibalism across dozens of counties in Guangxi.
context_section_description: Human cannibalism occurred in Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution. According to Zheng Yi (郑义), a scholar who conducted detailed research on the topic in the late 1980s and later smuggled some copies of official documents to the United States, at least 137 people—perhaps hundreds more—were eaten by others and thousands of people participated in the cannibalism. Documents also record a variety of forms of cannibalism, including eating people as an after-dinner snack, slicing off the meat in big parties, dividing up the flesh so each person could take a large chunk home, barbecuing or roasting the liver, and so on.
  
  According to Yan Lebin (晏乐斌), a member of the Ministry of Public Security who joined both of the investigation groups:
  In 1968, 38 people in Wuxuan County were eaten, and 113 officials of the county participated in eating human flesh, hearts and livers. Chen Guorong (陈国荣), a peasant from Guigang County who happened to pass by Wuxuan, was caught and killed by local militia because he was fat; his heart and liver were taken out while his flesh was distributed to 20 people. A female militia leader ate 6 human livers in total, and cut the genitals of 5 men and soaked them in alcohol which she would drink later, claiming that these organs were beneficial to her health. The behavior of eating human flesh, hearts and livers occurred in many counties of Guangxi including Wuxuan, Wuming, Shangsi, Guigang, Qinzhou, Guiping, and Lingyun......After the "Committee of Revolution" was established in Shangsi County, a "killing conference" was held at Pingshan Square (平山广场) on September 1, 1968, during which more than 10 officials and civilians were beaten to death. After the conference, a committee member, Li Hao (黎郝), removed the hearts and livers from the corpses, sauteing them and preparing them as dishes for other representatives who attended the conference.
  
  According to Song Yongyi (宋永毅), a Chinese historian who worked at the California State University, Los Angeles:
  Independent researchers in Guangxi counted a total of 421 people who were eaten in a single county. But there were reports of cannibalism across 27 counties in Guangxi; that's two-thirds of all the counties in Guangxi. There was one man who was said to be in the so-called fifth category, who was beaten to death where he stood. He had two kids, one of 11 and one of 14. The local officials and armed militia said that it was important to eradicate such people, and so they not only killed those two children: they ate them too. This took place in Pubei county, Guangxi, where 35 people were killed and eaten in total. Most of them were rich landowners and their families. There was one landowner called Liu Zhengjian whose entire family was wiped out. He had a 17-year-old daughter, Liu Xiulan, who was gang-raped by nine people [for 19 times] who then ripped open her belly, and ate her liver and breasts. There were so many incidents like this.
  
  According to Frank Dikötter, Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong, Senior Fellow at Hoover Institution of Stanford, and winner of the 2011 Samuel Johnson Prize:
  Throughout 1967 but also '68, there are factions in the countryside that start not just eliminating each other physically, but literally in a couple of small towns they start ritualistically eating each other. In other words, it is not enough to eliminate your class enemy. You have to eat his heart, so there are very well-documented cases of ritual cannibalism.
  There was a hierarchy in the consumption of class enemies. Leaders feasted on the heart and liver, mixed with pork, while ordinary villagers were allowed only to peck at the victims’ arms and thighs.
caption: Wuxuan County of Guangxi, where cannibalism was prevalent during the Cultural Revolution. The image shows the quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong on a street wall of Wuxuan.
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