ABSTRACT
China's peasant-farmers at first supported the Great Leap Forward, but it soon became apparent that the new planting practices were a disaster. In interviews with villagers in south China, the following account was given by local farmers. They pushed a system of planting called 'Sky Full of Stars' where a field would be so overplanted the seedlings starved each other out. The peasants knew it was useless, but there was simply no way to oppose anything, because the orders came from so high above. The peasants were ordered to smash their water jars to make them into fertilizer. They said it was stupid, that the jars were just sterile clay, but they had to smash the jars nonetheless. The period was called the 'Eat-It-All-Up Period' because people were eating five and six times daily but there was no harvest that year.
