Chronicles of the Guangxu Famine: The Earthen Courtyard

In the twenty-fourth year of the Guangxu reign, not a drop of rain fell after autumn began, and the millet in the fields withered into dry grass.

The county yamen's runners arrived with the village headman to demand the grain tax, saying that this year it had to be "paid in silver" and not a single grain would be accepted in its place.

Locusts swept through, blotting out the sky. They devoured the few remaining cornstalks until nothing but bare stalks remained.

To pay the grain tax, Mantun sold his family's fattest pig, but it wasn't enough.

He then tore boards from the fence and sold them in town. Still, it wasn't enough.

Landowner Zhang Laoshuan came by and offered to lend him silver, but the interest would compound viciously. Mantun looked at Xiulian holding their hungry, crying daughter Yadan and gritted his teeth as he signed the agreement.

Plague on the road as they fled famine, runners seizing men for military service, floods after the Yellow River burst its banks: the earthen courtyard's fence collapsed, and the roof beams leaked...