From Timothy Richard, Forty-five Years in China. Reminiscences by T. Richard. London: T. Fisher Unwin 1916. In Roger Pelissier, The Awakening of China 1793-1949. London: Secker & Warburg, English translation by Martin Kieffer, 1967, pp. 179-181. Reprinted by permission of Reed Books, London.

Famine in Shanxi Province, 1876-1879

On June 30th [1876] two scholars. . . between thirty and forty years of age.., came to see me, but as I was too busy, they called the next day by appointment. On entering, they prostrated themselves and asked to be accepted as my disciples. After some talk I discovered they were a deputation from a number of people who desired me to head a rebellion as the authorities were not providing food for the perishing people. They had already rented a house, and a large number of men were ready to execute my commands. I told the deputation that I could not dream of any such action, as it would only increase the suffering of the people. Once begun, no one knew where such a revolt would end, but it would certainly entail great bloodshed. I advised them to devise constructive instead of destructive methods for improving the condition of the people. . .
As the winter drew near, the distress became more acute. Reports came in from villages where previously there had been forty inhabitants reduced to ten survivors. The price of grain rose rapidly to three and four times its usual rate. Many people, hearing that grain was cheap in Manchuria, migrated across the Gulf of Pechihli. Those who could not afford to travel were forced to pull down their houses and sell every inch of woodwork in them, whether doors, windows, frames, or rafters, and so get money to buy millet chaff to try and keep body and soul together.
In order to keep warm in the depth of winter the poor wretches dug deep pits underground, where twenty, thirty, and even fifty persons would live together. Here the vitiated [polluted] atmosphere, as well as the lack of food, caused a large number of deaths. At first the survivors could not afford to dig a separate grave for each, so they made two large holes, one for men, the other for women, into which the dead were thrown. Afterwards the dead were left where they fell, sometimes in their homes, sometimes in the villages, sometimes on the roads, there they were devoured by wild dogs, wolves, and vultures. . . .

January 28th, 1878. Started on a journey south through the centre of the province to discover the severity of the famine. I rode on a mule, and had a servant with me, also on a mule. Before leaving the city we could not go straight to the south gate, as there was a man lying in the street about to die of starvation, and a crowd had gathered round.

January 29th. Passed four dead men on the road and another moving on his hands and knees, having no strength to stand up. Met a funeral, consisting of a mother carrying on her shoulder a dead boy ten years old. She was the only bearer, priest, and mourner, and she laid him in the snow outside the city wall. . . .

January 30th. Saw fourteen dead on the roadside. One had only a stocking on. His corpse was being dragged by a dog, so light it was. Two of the dead were women. They had had a burial, but it had consisted only in turning the faces to the ground. The passers-by had dealt more kindly with one, for they had left her clothes. A third corpse was a feast to a score of screaming crows and magpies. There were fat pheasants, rabbits, foxes, and wolves, but men and women had no means of living. One old man beside whom I slowly climbed a hill said most pathetically: "Our mules and donkeys are all eaten up. Our labourers are dead. What crime have we committed, that God should punish us thus?"

February 1st. Saw six dead bodies in half a day, and four of them were women: one in an open shed, naked but for a string around her waist; another in a stream; one in the water, half exposed above the ice at the mercy of wild dogs; another
half clad in rags in one of the open caves at the roadside; another half eaten, torn by birds and beasts of prey. Met two youths of about eighteen years of age, tottering on their feet, and leaning on sticks as if ninety years of age. Met another young man carrying his mother on his shoulders as her strength had failed. Seeing me looking at them closely, the young man begged me for help. This is the only one who has begged since I left T'ai-yuan fu [the capital of Shanxi Province].
Saw some men grinding soft stones, somewhat like those from which stone pencils are made, into powder which was . . . to be mixed with any grain, or grass seed, or roots and made into cakes. I tried some of these cakes, and they tasted like what most of them were-clay. Many died of constipation in consequence of eating them.

February 2nd. At the next city was the most awful sight I ever saw. It was early in the morning when I approached the city gate. On one side of it was a pile of naked dead men, heaped on top of each other as though they were pigs in a slaughterhouse. On the other side of the gate was a similar heap of dead women, their clothing having been taken away to pawn for food. Carts were there to take the corpses away to two great pits, into one of which they threw the men and into the other the women. . . . For many miles in this district the trees were all white, stripped clean for ten or twenty feet high of their bark, which was being used for food. We passed many houses without doors and window frames, which had been sold as firewood. Inside were kitchen utensils left untouched only because they could not be turned into money. The owners had gone away and died.

February 3rd. Saw only seven persons today, but no woman among them. This was explained by meeting carts daily full of women being taken away for sale. There were travellers on foot also, all carrying weapons of defence, even children in their teens, some with spears, some with bright, gleaming swords, others with rusty knives, proofs of their terrible plight. We did not feel very safe in their midst. . . .

February 4th. Having gone so far, and seeing such terrible sights, I decided to return to T'ai-yuan fu, as I had sufficient proofs of the horrors of famine to move even hearts of stone.
Even the wolves were becoming fearless. Seeing a wolf by the roadside one day, I yelled at him, expecting him to flee in terror. On the contrary, he stood and stared at me. . . .
Returning along the same road, we had a daily repetition of the same ghastly sights, until I sometimes wondered whether the scenes were not the imagination of a disordered mind.