Xu Pinghua

Date(s) of Arrest:
June 1958
Prison Terms:
Life imprisonment
Charges:
Counterrevolutionary Rightist
Crime:
Criticizing the government

In 1957, Xu Pinghua, a Korean War veteran, was labeled as a "counterrevolutionary Rightist" and sentenced to a life term in "reeducation through labor" camps in June 1958. Many of his fellow prisoners died in 1960 during the famines of the Great Leap Forward and were buried on South Mountain in Lingyuan County, Liaoning Province. Xu fell to eighty pounds in weight and became critically ill, but he ultimately survived. He had resorted to eating roundworms he found by picking through human waste. “Because I was so hungry, the roundworms seemed to taste like meat,” he recalled.