Mao’s War on Nature and the Great Sparrow Purge

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Coastal geology & environment, Comparative politics, Economics and society,, Environmental, International Relations, Memorabilia, Political History, Politics, Regional History, Sport

Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” (GLF) in 1958—communist China’s bold venture to transform the nation’s economy from agrarian to industrial—necessitated some drastic social engineering, and more than a little tinkering with nature. The “Paramount Leader”, repudiating the advice of state economists, consistently advocated the efficacy of population growth for China (Ren Duo, Liliang Da – “With Many People, Strength is Great”) …he stated that “even if China’s population multiplies many times, she is fully capable of finding a solution, the solution is production” (‘The Bankruptcy of the Idealist Conception of History’, (1949)). One strategy of Mao’s for protecting the imperative of national productivity and boosting output involved an extreme “solution” in itself.

Four Evils Campaign poster (source: chineseposters.net)

Pest controllers: As a plank of the GLF Mao spearheaded the “Four Evils Campaign”, four “pests” of the natural world were targeted for elimination – rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows…the first three especially concentrated in large numbers certainly could pose a threat to public health and hygiene, but why sparrows? Mao singled out the sparrow because it consumed the grain seed and rice from agricultural fields. What followed was a government propaganda campaign exhorting the people to fulfil their patriotic duty and zealously hunt down these proscribed “enemies of the state”. The regime enlisted the civilian population in a military-like operation, a coordinated mass mobilisation, dedicated to this singular task. The mass participation event included the very young, armies of children aged five and older were despatched from their homes armed with slingshot and stones, to formicate all over the countryside and wipe out vast numbers of sparrows often with frightening effectiveness.

“Patriotic duty” of young Chinese (source: chineseposters.net)

Mao v Nature: Mao’s war on passerine birds was part of a wider war on nature. Mao encapsulated the objective for China in one of his oft-repeated slogans: Ren Ding Sheng Tian (“Man must conquer nature”). Mao’s modernist conception of the world saw humans as fundamentally distinct and separate from nature, so in order to fashion the world’s most populous republic into the socialist utopia that he envisioned, nature, this external thing, had to be harnessed and defeated (Zhansheng ziran). The result was a drastic reshaping of China’s physical landscape, the over-extraction of resources, intensive farming schemes, massive deforestation, riverine pollution, over-hunting and over-fishing [Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War against Nature (2001)]

Eurasian Tree Sparrow: top of Mao’s nature hit-list

A monstrous ecological imbalance and a species endangered: The nationally coordinated campaign against the four pests proceeded with phenomenal speed and ruthless efficiency. By early 1960 an estimated one billion sparrows had been destroyed🄰, nearly wiping out the species altogether in China…a fateful consequence that was to prove catastrophic for the country’s food production. The authorities had not heeded the expert advice from Chinese scientists🄱 that sparrows fulfilled a vital function in feeding off not just crops but off insects including locusts. With the removal of this natural predator, locusts in plague quantities were free to ravage the nation’s fields of grain and rice, and ravage they did, in Nanjiang 60% of the produce fields were ruined [‘Mao and the Sparrows: A Communist State’s War Against Nature’, Agata Kasprolewicz, Przekroj, 22-Mar-2019, www.przekroj.org] .

The Great (man-made) Famine, 1959–1961: The resulting Great Famine in the PRC caused up to 30 million deaths and an estimated similar figure or more in lost or postponed births, making it the worst famine in human history judged by population loss [‘Berkeley study: Historic famine leaves multiple generations vulnerable to infectious disease’, Berkeley Public Health, www.publichealth.berkeley.edu]. The plunge in agricultural output linked to the sparrow decimation project was further exacerbated by other factors such as Peking’s procurements policy, increase in grain exports from 1957 (redirecting grain away from domestic consumption which otherwise could have allowed millions of Chinese to survive the famine); the priority on industrialisation diverting huge numbers of agricultural workers into industrial sectors adversely affected the food scarcity crisis.

Fujian province propaganda poster, 1960 (image: US National Library of Medicine)

Postscript: Reprising the eradication campaign In 1960 the Chinese government upon realising the folly of its sparrow offensive, overturned its proscription of the birds, declaring war on bed bugs in their place. The disastrous sparrow mega-kill episode however didn’t bury the Four Evils campaign forever. The Chinese government in 1998 launched a new version of the movement, posters were seen in Beijing and Chongqing urging citizens to kill the four pests…the first three were the usual suspects as in 1958, but this time cockroaches were substituted for sparrows. Unlike the original sparrow campaign the 1998 version was not successful [‘The Four Pests Campaign: Objectives, Execution, Failure, And Consequences, World Atlas, www.worldatlas.com].

🄰 along with 1.5 billion rats, over 220 million pounds of flies and over 24 million pounds of mosquitoes

🄱 there were doubters within the hierarchy of the Communist Party who had misgivings about the wisdom of the Paramount Leader’s policy, but most found it expedient to remain silent for fear of the personal consequences of incurring the wrath of Mao

From Dead End Kids to Bowery Boys with Several Other Monikers in Between

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Cinema, Economic history, Memorabilia, Performing arts
Little Rascals (aka “Our Gang’), 1938 (photo: Silver Screen Collection /Getty)

As a kid I developed a liking for “Our Gang” comedies, a series of American short films about a gang of poor, mainly white (but including black) children. I enjoyed the good-natured tomfoolery and minor mischief perpetrated by the juvenile gang members, particularly Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat. I’m thankful that I was exposed to the “Our Gang” shorts🅐 as it pointed me towards another cinema series about the same demographic that became part of my standard viewing fodder – the Dead End Kids series of movies and its successors.

The “53rd Street Gang” in their playground

While the antics of “Our Gang” were unadulterated if sentimentalised fun, I came to prefer the more serious tone and developed storylines of the “Dead End Kids” (DEK) movies. The early movies were starkly realistic, and this was realism of the grittiest kind, rooted in the unforgiving here and now of grim slum life in America’s depression era. These kids were dirt poor, locked into a daily struggle for survival, taking every opportunity, fair or foul, to fleece or steal from anyone or anything that presented itself. At the same time their brutal experience had made them rebels with a cause – the inequities of capitalist America…impoverished slum boys who never missed a chance to decry or one-up the “better-offs” in society.

Where it started: Dead End (1937)

The Kids from Dead End: The DEK phenomena had its genesis in a 1935 Broadway play, Dead End🅑, by Sidney Kingsley, featuring a cadre of young actors which would go on to form the nucleus of the gang in the movie series: Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, Huntz Hall, Bernard Punsley🅒 and the Gorcey brothers, Leo and David. The play was successful, running for two years, Hollywood mega-mogul Samuel Goldwyn saw the show and was immediately impressed. Goldwyn bought the film rights and made Dead End as a United Artists feature film in 1937, co-starring the Kids alongside Humphrey Bogart. The film was a hit but the boys caused havoc during the production, crashing a truck into a soundstage, prompting an annoyed Goldwyn to unload them to Warner Brothers.

Angels With Dirty Faces: the Dead Enders plus James Cagney in a gangster melodrama (source: alchetron.com)

Warners Bros’ crime school graduates: At Warner Brothers the Dead End Kids made six features, typically in supporting roles to big stars (Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Anne Sheridan, John Garfield and Bogart). In They Made me a Criminal (1939) starring Garfield, the Kids don’t make an appearance until 25 minutes into the film. The Warners’ series followed the studio’s formula of serious social crime dramas with the Kids heavily involved in the plot and also lending some comedy relief (‘Dead End Kids’, www.boweryboys.bobfinnan.com). Billy Halop was acknowledged as the leader of the gang and was purportedly paid more than the other boys, leading to some bad feelings within the group. Despite the DEK success at Warners the studio was disenchanted with the group’s off-camera antics (more impromptu hell–raising) and released them from their contracts after their sixth film.

Sea Raiders (1941): emphasising the interchangeable nature of the group’s various names, Universal tended to use the double-billing, “Dead End Kids” and “Little Tough Guys”, in their advertising

Little Tough Guys: Universal decided to get in on the act, cashing in on the DEK’s appeal with its own (B–movie) series. Billing the gang as the “Little Tough Guys”, Universal made 12 features in the late 1930s–early 40s, featuring at one time or other all of the original Kids except Leo Gorcey. Shemp Howard, one of the popular “Three Stooges”, appeared in two of the LTG movies, and was acknowledged by Huntz Hall as an influence on the slapstick style of comedy that the group later developed.

East Side Kids: The Dead End Kids morphed into a new incarnation called the “East Side Kids” in a series made by Monogram Pictures. These were 22 films made as low-budget imitations of the DEK movies, initially crime melodramas with comedic overtones, but as the series evolved, the comedy angle took greater emphasis. With Halop gone by this time, Leo Gorcey and Bobby Jordan were now the gang leaders. As the series progressed, the comedy duo of wise guy Leo Gorcey and zany but dim Huntz Hall became the focus in films like Million Dollar Kid and Spooks Run Wild (a horror comedy headlined by an ageing Bela Lugosi) (www.boweryboys.bobfinnan.com). As a variation on the usual criminals that the boys routinely cross swords with, in Let’s Get Tough (1942) they find themselves this time trying to foil Nazi and Japanese saboteurs in the US. A black former child actor of the original Our Gang movies “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison and William (“Billy”) Benedict were added to the ESK retinue of scruffy working class street kids.

Spooks Gone Wild (1941): East Side Kids v Dracula

Bowery Boys: Stoogesque slapstick and streetwise Abbott and Costello In 1945 the ESK series folded and was replaced by yet another name for the team of screen performers, the “Bowery Boys”🅓. Leo Gorcey this time had an enhanced stake in the enterprise, owning 40% of the production company🅔, acting as producer and contributing to the script. Gorcey also brought his father Bernard to the films’ players. Bobby Jordan left the series again and Gabriel Dell returned. The interaction of Leo Gorcey, with his malapropism-prone utterances as “Slip”, and Hunt as dim-witted sidekick “Sash”, continued to provide the central plank of the humour. The Bowery Boys series—made by Allied Artists, successor studio to Monogram—comprised 48 movies in all. The early efforts continued the standard fare of gangster melodrama, but after “Three Stooges” director Edward Bernds started directing Gorcey and Co, the films resorted more to slapstick comedy, Three Stooges-like wordplay and occasionally to fantasy themes (‘The Bowery Boys: Anything But Routine’, Ivan G. Shreve, Jr Classic Flix, 19-Sep-2013, www.classicflix.com). Abbott and Costello’s influence is also evident, there are obvious echoes of Africa Screams in the Bowery Boys’ Jungle Gents (1954) (‘Dead End Kids’ found new life as ‘Bowery Boys’, Jim Willard, Loveland Reporter-Herald, 07-July-2018, www.reporterherald.com).

Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (1954): several movies in the series sought to capitalise on the public’s craze for horror/monster movies

By the time the final Bowery Boys film In the Money is made in 1958, the series is looking tired, stale and frayed…only Huntz Hall and David Gorcey remain of the originals (Leo’s ongoing bouts with the demon alcohol saw his forced departure in 1956, replaced by Stanley Clements), the “Kids” were now middle-aged, hardly juvenile delinquent material, and their screen work lacking the verve and punch of earlier days.

In the Money (1958): ageing juvenile delinquents
🅐  syndicated for television in the 1960s as The Little Rascals

🅑 the “Dead End” tag came from the inscription on the road sign at the river’s edge in the original, 1937 film

🅒 Punsly was the odd one out among the “young punk” band of actors, he stayed in the DEK/ESK series only till 1942 (notching up 19 films) before leaving show biz for good to become a successful physician (later chief of staff at a private hospital in LA)

🅓 the Bowery is a street and neighbourhood in Lower Manhattan, NYC

🅔 Huntz Hall had 10%

“W”, “X”, “Y” & “Z” Words from Left Field II: Redux. A Supplement to the Logolept’s Diet

Posted on by demonymonic
Ancient history, Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Popular Culture

<word meaning & root formation>

Wadi: valley; stream; watercourse drying up in summer; oasis [from Arab. wādī‎, (“river” or “watercourse,”)]

Wadi in Jordan

Wanion: unluckily, due to the waning of the moon [from MidEng. waniand, from wanien, wanen (“to wane”)]

Withershins: in an unfortunate direction [from MidHighGer. wider (“against”)+ –sin (“direction”)]
Witling: a petty smart Alec; a mere pretender to wit (Bowler)[conjunction of wit + -ling]

<word meaning & root formation>

Xenium: a present given to a guest [from Gk. xenial (pertaining to hospitality or relationship between host and guest) (cf. Xenodochium: a building for the reception of strangers; a caravanserai)

Caravanserai in Fars, Iran

Xenogenous: due to an outside cause; of foreign origin [from Gk. xeno]

word meaning & root formation

Yaul: to deviate from a stable course because of oscillation about the longitudinal axis (Rocket science) (Origin unknown)

Yegg: a burglar of safes; safecracker (Origin obscure: one (dubious) suggestion is from German jäger (“hunter”))

The challenge of the Yegg (Chubb advertisement)

Yemeles: negligent; careless; heedless [OldEng. from Germ.]

Yisse: desire or covet (Origin unknown)

word meaning & root formation

Zeigarnik: (Psych.) the theory that people remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks; the tendency to remember an uncomplicated task [named after Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik (Zeigarnik Effect]

Zelotypia: morbid zeal; excessive jealousy [L. zēlotypia (“jealousy”) (Pliny) from Gk. (“jealousy, rivalry, envy“) 

Zoilism: carping; destructive criticism [from Zoilus, ancient Greek grammarian and literary critic … was hyper-critical of Homer (Zoilus the “Homeromastix”)]

Zoilus of Ephesus

Zooerastia: (–asty) the practice of a human engaging in sexual intercourse with an animal; bestiality [from Gk. zoo + -astia]

Zoopery: experimentation on animals [from zoo + L. –operārī (“to work, labor, toil, have effect”)]

Zugzwang: a state of play in chess where the player is at a disadvantage as his or her next move will worsen their position in the game (cf. snookering) [from Ger. (“compulsion to move”)]

Zugzwang

Desperately Seeking William…Just William

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Memorabilia, Popular Culture
William’s literary debut, 1922

“Head boy of fiction”

If you could travel in the Tardis back to my primary school days, you’d find me most lunchtimes in the school library with my head in the fiction section habitually combing through the shelves for any books from my favourite series of reads for kids that I hadn’t yet wolfed down. Precisely I’d have my nose in the ‘C’ section – ‘C’ for Richmal Crompton, the author of the “Just William” series of books. From about the age of nine or ten I was hooked on the rebellious juvenile role model William, a 1920s–1960’s version of Harry Potter in his all-consuming cult appeal🄰…William became as integral to my childhood as Classics Illustrated comics, plasticine and chocolate malted sundaes. With more energy than I could ever summon for my obligatory school home work, I dedicated myself with missionary zeal to reading every single Just William book I could lay my hands on! Fortunately for me there was plenty of scope for that ambition, Crompton having written 39 Just William books in all. In the end I’m not sure if I actually read all of them (did the library hold the entire collection?), but I was certainly exposed to enough of them to become a vicarious member of “The Outlaws”.

The popularity of the Just William books prompted multiple other media spin-offs, including several television series—the 1962 series cast Denis Waterman (above) as William—as well as films and radio serials

William (Brown) is 11, and like Peter Pan he doesn’t age, despite the Just William entries in the series stretching over a period of nearly half-a-century!🄱 William in appearance is scruffy-haired and untidy, in nature straight talking, anarchic and rebellious – which generally lands him and his own small gang of school friends “The Outlaws” in hot water. Guy Mankowski attributes the series’ success (12 million books sold in the UK alone) to the English love of the rebel. My own recollection of the general tenor of mainstream Western society circa 1965, before the societal ripples of the Counterculture and Vietnam were felt, was still very conformist and strait-jacketed. I delighted in the character of William, his rebellious free spirit and sense of fun, constantly waging a war against the rules of adults which stop children like him enjoying the fun things in life (like unlimited ice cream). What also endeared me was William’s sheer inventiveness, constantly coming up with sometimes zany, always hilarious schemes to make money or to teach grown-ups a lesson or two, and the like. And I might add just quietly, William’s loud anti-school rhetoric didn’t diminish his appeal in my books as well.

Early volumes

Two things I only found out about Just William in my adulthood…I had from the start assumed that the author of the William books was a man, he had to be a man to write about a mischievous albeit good-natured boy with such knowing authority, I thought (plus, though “Richmal” was a weird first name, it sounded more like an upper-class toff’s name than a women’s name). Wrong on both counts! Miss Richmal Crompton Lamburn was in fact a school mistress (ironically – in an all-girls school!) who contracted polio and spent the rest of her life writing the William series of books as well as 41 separate adult novels (which she rated as her real true literary work)🄲. The second discovery was that John Lennon also harboured an all-consuming passion for the Just William stories growing up in Forties and Fifties Liverpool. Had I known at the time that no less a global cultural luminary of the Sixties than Beatle John hero-worshipped the fictional rebel William, my own cup of infatuated fandom for “Britain’s favourite naughty boy” may have runneth over even more than it did🄳.

Miss Crompton with juvenile “proofreaders” (photo: Keystone/Getty Images)

Something else that slipped under the radar of my 11-year-old self was the topicality (and sometimes controversial nature) of the William stories. In the 1940s in William and the Brains Trust William responds to the publication of the Beveridge Report—the blueprint for radical social policy change that profoundly affected postwar UK—with a list of his own child-centred demands. William the Dictator reflected the Western world’s concern with the rise of fascism and National Socialism. The US/USSR space race in the Fifties inspired the Just William titles William and the Moon Rocket and William and the Space Animal.  Occasionally Crompton strayed onto edgy and even highly controversial turf. In the 1934 short story ‘William and the Nasties’ William and his Outlaws copy Hitler’s jackbooted Nazis by harassing and persecuting a local Jewish sweet-shop owner…passages such “There came to William glorious visions of chasing Jew after Jew out of sweetshop after sweetshop” definitely wouldn’t pass the politics or ethical pub test in our avowedly PC times. The anti-Semitic tone of ‘William and the Nasties’ has ensured its exclusion from modern editions of the William series.

William the Lawless, the final book in the series, published in 1970, the year after Crompton’s death

🄰 perhaps a better analogy is with Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole character although Adrian is way too timid and wimpishly sensitive juxtaposed to William

🄱 2022 was the centenary of the publication of the first Just William book in the series, although William’s debut in print was in a 1919 magazine story

🄲 Crompton Lamburn apparently based the character of William on a combination of her younger brother Battersby and her nephew Tommy

🄳 in William the Lawless (1970) William receives as a present, a Beatles’ LP