As part of the Great Leap Forward, China was to carry out a complete modernization of the economy. They decided to start with agriculture - to destroy all pests in the fields, and that's the end of it. However, something went wrong.
In 1958, Mao Zedong was told that small pests were destroying food in the fields that would have sufficed for 35 million people. The leader flew into a rage and ordered: to remove rats, mosquitoes, flies and sparrows under the root.
We started with the sparrows. It was easy to destroy them: a bird can spend only 15 minutes in flight - the Chinese went out into the fields and beat drums, the sparrows could not sit down to rest and fell to the ground.
The nests were also ravaged. In three days, approximately 100,000 sparrows died in Beijing. Schoolchildren went into action: they were removed from lessons and led purposefully to hunt birds. That was joy!
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Agitation posters, radio, news. All China rejoiced at the victories over the sparrows. The newspapers were full of photographs of dead birds. In just a year, the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire consumed about a billion sparrows. And what about the harvest?
Yes, next year more was collected from the fields. The party congratulated the Chinese on the successful completion of the first phase of pest control. But a little later, real problems began.
Sparrows are the main enemy of locusts. And these insects multiply at a terrible speed. The locusts destroyed everything in the Chinese fields, and famine began.
In a short time, about 30 million Chinese died. The communists in power quickly "changed their shoes", calling for an end to the sparrow hunt. By the way, Comrade Mao had to buy them in Canada.
