Chapter 12 Summary and Analysis

At six, Er-hong begins school, but there are few lessons. Children help gather scrap iron which is melted down by teachers and older students while the younger students babysit and clean the teachers' apartments. At the hospital, doctors and nurses are also responsible for melting down iron. People are no longer allowed to eat at home, but eat in communal kitchens. Everyone is forced to say they'll produce outrageous feats—huge animals or vegetables. Even doctors say they've cured incurable diseases. There became no incentive to actually do work and those in agriculture simply stopped planting—and there was no harvest though the official numbers indicated a larger-than-normal harvest.

Meetings were planned for all party officials. Chang Shou-yu broke his own rule and warned De-hong that it was a trap—the first time he'd ever put his wife...