lost opportunity
The professor described a Sichuan teacher, Professor Hou Guangjun, who had designed research experiments in accordance with traditional practices, advocating “natural nonploughing” [ziran 1lliangeng} or “no till” agriculture. In the 1950s, after seeing his research plot in Yibin Prefecture, Changling County, a Party leader became convinced of the efficacy of his methods and gave him a large piece of low-yield land for his work. Yields rose through the no-till method. After the Leap began and his ideas became heresy, Hou escaped persecution only because he
had a political patron. The agriculture professor sighed at the lost opportunity:
“If Professor Hou’s methods had been adopted nationally, much wasted labor could have been avoided. The whole question of “taking grain as the key link” to raise agricultural yields could have been addressed in a more moderate way. Bur what leaders said counted, and what intellectuals said was ignored. We were targets for reform.”
Hou’s noninvasive approach, reminiscent of Daoist attitudes of oneness with nature and harmonious accommodation to its ways, was the very antithesis of the Leap’s coercive, labor-intensive interventionism.
—Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature
