Hungry Beijing in the Summer of 1960: Empty Shelves Everywhere

As I walked to the Beijing Hotel, I recalled the scene of life in the 1950s, thinking that this scene is probably gone forever!

I stepped into the restaurant of the Beijing Hotel, thinking that it would definitely be full of customers, but it was empty and no one was there. I looked at my watch, it was a quarter past twelve, it was time to be seated. So, did I go through the wrong door? Just as he was about to leave, the waiter greeted him. When I looked at the menu, I understood. The minimum dish is five yuan, all the way to twenty or thirty yuan. The asking price is too high, this is not like toffee and cakes, three to five yuan per catty, you can always eat for a while. After eating this meal, it is six or seven yuan or ten yuan, which can't help but discourage people.

Since I'm here, I have to bite the bullet and order. I asked for the cheapest dish: canned crab with cabbage, five yuan, and three taels of rice. I don't dare to ask for soup, it costs one or two yuan for a soup. I looked around the hall, it was empty, more than a dozen tables were empty, and my heart was not happy.

After a while, two more customers finally arrived. The waiter asked them to sit at a table with me, presumably to make things easier. I think they were about a couple. The man was forty-six or seven years old. He was wearing an old black woolen uniform, which was given to cadres at the county and regiment level after entering the city. He'd been wearing it for about ten years, with a lot of wear and tear, and it was strapped tightly around him. The woman was only about thirty years old. She was wearing a purple-red woolen coat and green military woolen pants. She was very tacky. They looked at the menu and discussed it in a low voice for a long time. The waiter became impatient as they stood aside, so they only ordered a fried pork slice with squid. The waiter pursed his lips in disdain.

The dishes are served. Canned crab, bland and tasteless, I had to deal with it and eat it. After the two fried squid slices were served on the table, a small plate. I wondered, how would the two of them have enough to eat? I saw the woman eating the vegetables one bite after another, while the man only dipped the flower rolls in some soup. I think this is probably a kind of treatment for husbands among old couples and young wives. Anything that is delicious should be given to young wives. Twenty flower rolls, the two of them actually ate all of them, and there was not a drop of water left on the plate, and they were wiped clean. I didn't find it funny.

I stood up and walked out of the Beijing Hotel. Looking at Tiananmen from afar, it is still resplendent and magnificent. My mood was bleak. It's enough to venture to a pricier restaurant once. My purse is not allowed to go to such a place for unnecessary consumption. There are only ice lollies on the road, which cost five cents a piece, which has not raised the price. I bought one, took a bite, and the coolness was even more striking.

Soon, the organization provided two catties of soybeans to cadres at the 17th level and above, and two catties of pork to the cadres at the thirteenth level and above to help the cadres get through difficult times. The cadres in the county seat, many of whom live in the countryside, can find supplementary food from their private plots. In the free market, you can also buy some vegetables and eggs. The free market in Beijing was only open for three days and closed again, so I didn't go. A comrade from the newspaper office bought a Laiheng hen for twenty-five yuan. He wanted to raise it to eat eggs, but he built a chicken coop in the aisle, causing everyone to complain, so he had to kill it and eat it. Comrades with savings all use their savings to buy high-priced snacks and sweets, or to go to high-end restaurants. I heard that Comrade Pan Fei devoured all his 3,000 yuan deposits.

Of course, if you have savings to eat, and subsidies for soybeans and pork, the life of a cadre is always decent. Farmers are suffering. When I went to Guizhou in 1960, a comrade from the branch told me that hundreds of thousands of peasants in Guizhou died unnaturally. More farmers died of starvation in Anhui and Henan. I have an Anhui nanny who is from Huoqiu County. She told me tearfully that her mother, sister and two children all died during that difficult time; more than half of the people in the village died. She opened some wasteland and wanted to grow some sweet potatoes, but the village cadres leveled the land. I would rather starve people to death than allow you to have a little "little freedom"!

Fortunately, this terrible year is over. Now, seeing the dazzling array of food products in the store, and seeing the news that farmers have difficulty selling grain, I think of those difficult days in the early 1960s, as if it happened in a very, very distant past. These are all history.

I believe that such a history will not repeat itself!