In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter 4 81 Chapter 4 p The Plight of Sparrows In 1958 there was a nationwide killing of sparrows. This could only be done with the official government directive and command from the very top authority. An official directive was issued in 1958 by the Chinese government which stated that the whole nation was to stop work for three days to take part in a campaign to kill all the sparrows in the country. We were told how harmful the sparrows were and that they consumed large quantities of grain. They caused the famine in our country and so they must be annihilated. This was considered a political task. The launching of the sparrow killing campaign started at daybreak, when the sparrows started to fly out from their nests. When the clock struck five, a thunderous noise was heard. People started to beat gongs, bicycle bells rang and drums rolled. People thought of all conceivable ways and means to make the most thunderous din, heralding the start of the campaign. There were many ways of killing the birds. We had to keep them from touching the ground and keep them flying in the air until out of exhaustion, they would fall and drop dead to the ground. To carry out this strategy, people were posted everywhere to shoo the poor birds. Some stood in the streets waving big palm leaves. Others stood on rooftops with long poles to drive the sparrows away. The whole city of Beijing was on the alert. There was a most chaotic commotion all over the place. People were shouting and shooing, others beating on the bottom of their washbasins. The noise was deafening. We heard that several people fell from roof tops while driving the sparrows off. The Foreign Ministry sent memorandums to the foreign embassies asking them to cooperate, and most of them did. However, the Yugoslav embassy refused to cooperate because Yugoslavia and China were not on good terms then. When the sparrows 82 China, Bound and Unbound flew into the compound of the Yugoslav embassy, there was no one there to shoo them off. The Chinese climbed up their walls and shouted in complaint to the embassy staff, who only laughed, saying that they were allowing the birds to seek “political asylum” in their embassy. My job was to sit under a big tree in the compound of the Foreign Ministry. A long rope was tied to a branch of a tree and every now and then I tugged the rope and the leaves on the branch would stir the whole tree, not allowing the birds to land there. At a reception, a foreign correspondent asked me, “Why do you want to kill all the sparrows in your country? In our country we love sparrows because they eat the worms and insects and help the farmers.” I could not give him an answer. This was an order from the very top and we must all obey. It was a political campaign. There is a Chinese proverb which says, “Though the sparrow is small, it has all the five vital organs of the human body,” which means that some things though small may have all the components to give true evidence. The killing of the sparrows could indeed illustrate the totalitarian situation in China. The top authority in China gave the order with absolute authority, and it was carried out to the letter without question. Looking back, all the efforts spent on killing the harmless sparrows in the whole country sounds ridiculous and laughable, yet in the 1950s it was carried out with all seriousness. In 1957 October, the Draft Programme of Agricultural Development was revised and called the “40 Clauses.” The 27th clause in the “40 Clauses” explicitly stated that starting from 1958, in five, seven or twelve years, China must basically in all possible places annihilate all rats, sparrows, flies and mosquitoes. The “40 Clauses” was an official document, and for its implementation, party committees at all levels fixed practical methods. Patriotic health organizations for the elimination of the four vermin were set up at all levels to cooperate with the party committees’ work. From thence, sparrows were considered one of the four vermin and a nationwide elimination of sparrows was unfurled. In many places overheated tendencies occurred, and fixed quotas for the catching of all kinds of birds, regardless of their species, were planned. Hence, the fowls of the air in the wide expanse of land in China were doomed...

Share