Word: grained
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...well over a decade, the Dazhai production brigade in China's Shanxi province was the object of nothing less than a cult. The small, 40-family work unit, whose herculean labors were said to have produced astounding grain yields on steep hills, was held up as a model for all of rural China. LEARN FROM DAZHAI was the slogan that covered walls and farm buildings from northeastern Heilongjiang province to Yunnan in the southwest...
...that Dazhai may have been no more than a Potemkin façade. In a rare exposé, the People's Daily reported that Xiyang county, where Dazhai is located, consistently falsified production figures between 1973 and 1977. The paper charged that nearly 300 million Ibs. of nonexistent grain, or 24% of real production, had been added to the county's claims over the five years. In one particularly bad year, county reports inflated actual yield by 60%. The exposé was an unmistakable criticism of one of the late Chairman Mao Tse-tung's most sacred...
...rocky and dry. Farming is confined to low-yielding terraces that have been carved out of the hills and planted primarily with corn. Peasant incomes are one-third of those on the wealthy Jin Ma commune; they average $44 a year, more than half of which is distributed in grain rather than cash. No one starves, but the commune members eat meat only once a week...
Silvio Narizzano's portrait of Max's attempts to learn them scruffy varmints their educational rudiments is adequate. He might have used color to better effect in portraying the relentless winter nights that settle over the grain fields; or further developed his political commentary, which stops at simplistic socialism...
Thus, while Southern farmers are downcast, many of their Midwestern counterparts are happy. The reason: their heavy stocks of wheat or corn in storage are now worth more. Said Maurice Van Nostrand, an official of the giant A.G.R.I. Industries, a cooperative of grain elevator operators: "In the last two weeks, we have been buying three times as much as we did in May. I can't imagine the market being more powerful, even if the Russians were still...