The Flesh Banquets of Wuxuan

During China's Cultural Revolution, factional violence in Guangxi province (1967–68) escalated past mass killing into public cannibalism. Official death toll: 100,000–150,000 (some estimates go to 500,000). At least 421 named victims were killed and eaten, not from famine, but as an ideological act. Victims were "class enemies": landlords, intellectuals, anyone denounced as counter-revolutionary. Eating them was a public proof of revolutionary loyalty.

In towns like Wuxuan, organs were cut from victims, sometimes while still alive, and eaten communally at what witnesses called "flesh banquets." One teacher, Wu Shufang, was denounced by her own students, killed, and had her heart and liver cut out and barbecued by them at their school.

It stayed hidden for nearly 20 years until writer Zheng Yi investigated and published Scarlet Memorial (1993) under a pseudonym after fleeing China. The book is still banned there. A government probe (1981–88) compiled an 18-volume internal archive; only 15 people were ever jailed. China has never publicly acknowledged it.

Reference

• Zheng Yi's Scarlet Memorial
• Donald Sutton, "Consuming Counterrevolution" (Cambridge)
• Andrew Walder, "Anatomy of a Regional Civil War: Guangxi 1967–1968."

Originally published to X Articles on July 19, 2026