When my brain most needed nourishment, it was also the time when most Chinese were starving half to death. I often told my friends that if I hadn’t been hungry, I would definitely be smarter than I am now—though perhaps not necessarily. Because I was born without enough to eat, my earliest memories were all about food.

At that time, my family had more than ten members. Whenever a meal was served, I would cry bitterly. My uncle’s daughter was four months older than me. When we were both about four or five years old, my grandmother would give each of us a slice of moldy sweet potato during every meal. I always felt she favored my cousin, giving her a slightly bigger slice, so I would grab hers and throw mine to her. Then, realizing my own slice was bigger, I’d snatch it back again.

After a few rounds of this, my cousin would cry. My aunt’s face would lengthen. My grandmother naturally sided with my cousin, scolding me. My aunt’s words were even harsher. My mother repeatedly apologized to them for my “big belly,” lamenting that she shouldn’t have given birth to such a child.

After finishing that slice of sweet potato, we were left with wild vegetable dumplings—black, prickly, and unappetizing, yet we had to eat them. So I ate while crying, swallowing along with my tears. I wondered how our generation survived and grew with so little nourishment. At the time, I longed for the day when I could eat a satisfying slice of sweet potato.

In the spring of 1960, probably one of the darkest springs in human history, all edible things were gone—roots, bark, even grass from rooftops. People in the village died almost every day. At first, the dead were still buried, and relatives would go to the village temple to “report to the land deity” and cancel the deceased’s household registration. Later, no one buried the dead anymore, and no one cried or “reported” to the temple. Some still dragged corpses outside the village, where packs of crazed dogs waited, tearing at the dead. I now understood the phrase about “skin-and-bone coffins” in some plays.

Some books wrote about cannibalism at the time, but I believe it was very localized. I heard that a man named Ma Si allegedly cut meat from his deceased wife to eat, but there was no confirmation, as he soon died himself.

Grain—where did all the grain go? Who ate it? People in the village were too timid to go out, dying quietly at home. Later, we heard that a certain kind of white soil in Nanwali could be eaten, so we dug it up and ate it. Some died from intestinal blockage, so we stopped.

By then, I was in school. One winter, the school brought in a cart of shiny coal. A classmate with tuberculosis said it smelled delicious, and the more you chewed, the better it tasted. We all tried it, and indeed, it was strangely tasty. In class, while the teacher wrote on the blackboard, we chewed coal, making a “crunch, crunch” sound. The teacher asked what we were eating; we all said coal. The teacher, Ms. Yu, also starved, her face waxen yellow, looked doubtful. She took a small bite, frowned at first, then began eating in surprise, saying, “Ah, it really tastes good!”

Years later, when visiting home, I met Grandpa Wang, who had been a school janitor at the time. He confirmed the coal story: it was completely true.

Eventually, the state sent relief food—bean cakes, half a pound per person. My grandmother gave me a piece the size of an apricot pit. I chewed it slowly, savoring the taste, reluctant to swallow.

My neighbor, Grandpa Sun, ate all two pounds of bean cakes on his way home and then drank cold water, which caused his stomach to burst, and he died. My mother later said that people then had stomachs as thin as paper, no fat. Adults had edema; we children had bellies like water jars, translucent, with visible blue intestines squirming inside. We could eat a lot; five- or six-year-olds could drink eight bowls of coarse vegetable porridge at a time.

Life gradually improved. Basic rations of half a year’s grain became available. My uncle in the supply and marketing cooperative managed to obtain a bag of cottonseed cakes. At night, I would sneak one into bed and eat it, savoring the flavor.

Livestock had all died of hunger. In the production team’s barn, they boiled carcasses in large pots. Children swarmed around like wolves, drawn by the smell. A big kid named Yunshu led them in singing revolutionary songs. The team leader drove us away, but we soon returned, sniffing for scraps. My second brother grabbed a horse hoof, brought it home like a treasure, roasted it, chopped it, and boiled it. The soup was exquisitely delicious, a taste I could never forget decades later.

During the later years of the Cultural Revolution, we still didn’t have enough to eat. I would pick warty mushrooms growing on corn stalks, cook them with a little salt and garlic, and savor them as the finest delicacy. I later heard that frog meat was even tastier than mutton, but my mother forbade it, thinking it dirty.

Eventually, sweet potatoes became plentiful. By the end of the year, my family received over 290 yuan, an astonishing sum at the time. My father bought five pounds of meat, maybe more, to reward us. I could eat a large bowl of fat meat in one sitting.

Even as a child, I was known for being greedy. Whenever there was food at home, I would sneak some, sometimes eating everything, risking scolding. I also felt guilty for taking food intended for my grandparents while delivering meals.

In the mid-1970s, at a waterworks construction site, I could eat four large steamed buns at a time; some could eat six.

In 1976, I joined the army, finally leaving hunger behind. In my new unit, my first meal was eight white steamed buns in a basket—I ate them all at once. My stomach still felt empty, but I was embarrassed to eat more. The cook joked, “Oh no, here comes the big belly man.” A month later, I could only eat two at a time, and now one is enough.

Even with enough to eat, I would sometimes rush at a banquet, afraid not to get enough. Afterward, I would regret it. I wanted to eat slowly and gracefully, but others still criticized me for eating too much, too fast, like a wolf. I became more self-conscious and tried to eat elegantly, picking only one bean sprout at a time, like a bird or butterfly. Yet people still mocked my speed and appetite.

I noticed that those criticizing women ate like hippos when full. Anger rose in me, and next time, I would take half a plate of sea cucumber to my own bowl and devour it defiantly. This time, they laughed kindly and said, “Mo Yan is really adorable.”

Looking back over thirty years of eating, I feel I have been no different from a pig or a dog, always sniffing around, searching for food, trying to fill an endless void. I have wasted too much intelligence worrying about food; now that the problem is solved, my mind is gradually less sharp.

THE END