Cannibalism. Where it began to go wrong...

Source 2.
Here I have two sources on the affects of starvation, and the famine had on people
First is from a writer called Yang Jisheng, who wrote the book tombstone (2008) exposing Mao's secret Famine, this extract he is asking a local, Yu Dehong, a retired cadre from the local waterworks bureau, gives an account on his experience In China,
'The surviving residents protested later that they had been too short-handed and exhausted to give the dead the dignity of a burial. They blamed the disfigured corpses on hungry dogs, whose eyes, according to rumours which swept the area, had turned red after gnawing at human flesh. “That is not true,” said Yu. “All the dogs had already been eaten by humans. How could there be dogs left at the time?” The corpses hadn’t been eaten by ravenous animals. They had been cannibalised by local residents. Many people in Xinyang over that winter, and the two that followed, owed their survival to consuming dead members of their families, or stray corpses they could get their hands on.'
This source is vital for historians, in showing the brutality and cruelty people endured throughout China's famine, not only are we looking at figures of 20 million lives, not just a figure, but really understand the depressing, horrific state China was in, yes China did some good in the great leap forward, but was it worth the millions of lives Mao claimed? Did China ever become a world power by allowing a mass self-genocide to happen?

My second source is by J.Becker, whose extract is from Hungry Ghost (1996)
'That Winter (1960) Cannibalism became common. Generally the villagers ate the flesh of corpses, especially those of children. In rare cases, parents ate their own children, elder brothers ate younger brothers, elder sisters ate their younger sisters. In most cases, cannibalism was not punished by the Public Security Bureaux because it was not considered as severe a crime as destroying state property and the means of production. This latter crime often merited the death sentence.Travelling around the region over thirty years later, every peasant that I met over 50 said he personally knew of a case of cannibalism in his production team.'
This source is chilling in itself 'parents ate their own children', a horrific period, in which not only was their famine, but families destroyed, and emotional bonds broken because of this disastrous period of time. Even worse was the idea that corpses were genuinely not treated rightly and the Public Security Bureaux saw it as no crime, which suggests that the government had no care of the extent people are willing to go due to famine as long as it didn't destroy state property. Also it shows that cannibalism in these regions were not a rare thing, and it was just what people had to do to get by, showing us the true contents of Mao's famine.

These two sources will help me in identifying the difficulties and horrific life these citizens had to go for, It helps me understand a failure of the Great Leap Forward, and creates graphical, visual images for me to interpret what life was really like for people in Mao's Famine.
These sources are more of a devasting aftermath of the GLF which means I need to collect sources for positivity towards Mao's GLF, in order to create a balancing argument for my essay question.