The Ditch

At the end of the 1950s, the Chinese government condemned thousands of citizens – considered “right wing dissidents” due their past activities, criticisms of the Communist Party or simply their backgrounds and families – to forced labour camps. Deported for re-education to the Jiabiangou Camp in Western China, in the heart of the Gobi Desert, some 3,000 poor or middle-class “intellectuals” from Gansu Province were forced to submit to conditions of absolute destitution. As a result of backbreaking physical labour, an unrelentingly extreme climate and terrible food shortages, many perished nightly in the ditches where they slept.