6 May 2022

Shanghai’s Food Shortages Spur Voluntarism and Cynicism

Tracy Wen Liu

Last month, in an article published by Xinhua News, multiple botanists in Shanghai made an emergency announcement, calling on Shanghai residents not to dig up and consume wild vegetables, tree roots, and bamboo shoots grown in apartment complexes lest they accidentally poison themselves. This was a realistic fear; some residents, desperate for food, had already reportedly fallen sick after consuming wild vegetables growing in the shared areas of their apartment complexes. It was eerily reminiscent of the desperate times of the Great Leap Forward, a period when China saw mass famine from 1959-1961, when the bark was stripped from trees by starving people.

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