Eating Bitterness

Kimberley Ens Manning is an associate professor of political science at Concordia University. Felix Wemheuer is an assistant professor in the Department for East Asian Studies at the University of Vienna.

Contributors: Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, Richard King, Xin Yi, Wang Yanni, Gao Hua, Yixin Chen, Jeremy Brown, Ralph A. Thaxton Jr., and Wangling Gao

An important collection that contributes both new perspectives and rich data. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the Great Leap Famine and the early years of the PRC.

Thomas P. Bernstein, co-author of Taxation without Representation in Contemporary China:
Explaining how a Communist regime that came to power with peasant support could stumble so badly is a task that has engaged many scholars. Eating Bitterness is a very welcome addition to this literature. Several of its authors have had access to sources that only opened up recently, especially local archives; still others report findings from years of doing oral history in the villages. It will be an attractive reader in history and politics courses on contemporary China.

Steve Smith, author of Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History:
This landmark volume brings the fruits of recent revisionist scholarship to a western readership. Its originality lies in the fact that is not only concerned with “high politics,” but with the impact of the Great Leap Forward on society as a whole, in particular, on grassroots rural communities. The authors seek to get behind officially propagated images of mass mobilization by raising acute questions about the mix of enthusiasm and coercion that powered the mobilization and the relationship of central and provincial organs of government to local officials. I will use Eating Bitterness extensively in my teaching and research.