On the grounds of the old Imperial Palace in Peking, rows of plebeian cabbages crowded up to the foundations. In the city not a taxicab could be found because the drivers were out collecting manure. Canton schoolchildren scurried out of class to plant vegetable gardens in vacant lots. To a foreign newsman, Premier Chou En-lai moaned that China this year had been visited by the worst combination of natural disasters in the century. No fewer than 133 million acres (one-half of the arable land) had been blistered by drought, tattered by storms or chomped bare by grasshoppers.
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