Interview with Long Tianyuan

Long Tianyuan (b. 1938) is a resident of Wangjiayan Village, Baiyun Town, Shimen County, Hunan Province. She is aunt of the interviewer, Jia Zhitan, and married a man in Wangjiayan Village in 1958. That year, Long carried charcoal for constructing blast furnace during the daytime, and attended the review meeting of the production team at night in 1958. In the winter of 1959, the men villagers stripped to waist and the women villagers only wore summer clothing when constructing the Heping Reservoir. The tombstones of some villagers’ ancestors’ tombs were used to build roads and the reservoir. Long also talks about several fellow villagers, who died of starvation after the people’s commune canteen was established, and one villager, who committed suicide after stealing the canteen’s soybeans. Long also recounts in detail how she was afflicted during the Great Leap Forward and the Great Famine because her husband’s class status was rich farmer, and how her husband died in a coal mine in 1960.

龙天元（1938年生）是湖南省石门县白云乡王家堰村村民。龙老人是采访者——贾之坦——的姨妈，1958年嫁到王家堰村。在这段口述中，龙老人讲述了1958年大炼钢铁时自己白天挑木炭、晚上参加生产队总结会，1959年冬天男人光着上身、女人穿着单衣修和平水库，以及挖村民祖坟的墓碑修公路和水库的情况。龙老人还谈到了兴办公社食堂时饿死的几位村民，一位偷了食堂的黄豆害怕挨批斗而上吊自杀的村民。龙老人还详细谈到了丈夫家因为阶级成分是富农，在大跃进和大饥荒时期处处受到刁难以及丈夫1960年死在外地煤矿的经历。

Transcripts for this interview and more may be available under the ‘Documents’ link above. 采访抄录和相关内容，请点击查看上面的’Documents’链接。