birds, chinese communist party, great famine, great leap forward, mao zedong, war on sparrows

1958: Mao Zedong’s War on Sparrows

Many bizarre (and horrific) things have been done in the name of communism in China. One of them was Mao Zedong’s war on sparrows, a campaign waged by the communist leader to eradicate Eurasian tree sparrows. Mao lumped the little brown bird along with rats, flies, and mosquitoes in the so-called Four Pests (or four ...

Rory Karsten

A Eurasian tree sparrow.

A Shattered Chinese Dream

Mr. Wu Ningkun, an acclaimed Chinese translator and an Anglo-American literary research expert, passed away at the age of 99 on August 10, 2019, in the United States. He is best known for his Chinese translation of The Great Gatsby, a 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and his memoir about a shattered Chinese dream ...

Max Lu

Wu Ningkun.