China protects its crops

At 5 o'clock on the morning of April 18, 1958, the few western expatriates in Peking (Beijing) were jerked out of their beds by a frightful din: shouts, explosions, harshly - shouted orders, al mingled together. What on earth was afoot? A revolution! A riot, perhaps! No-nothing of the sort. It was a sparrow hunt.

In Peking, in three days and nights, some 750,000 sparrows perished. How many more died throughout the country during the macabre hunt when the whole country was mobilized for it? Many millions, without doubt!

However, after the 72-hour long mass slaughter came to an end, the government declared that it was a complete success and one of the four scourges of China had been eliminated by the people.

According to posters displayed all over Peking, the four scourges were the rat, breeder of diseases; the mosquito, bringer of Malaria, the housefly, responsible for many a sickness, and the sparrow.

What was the sparrow accused of? Being extremely numerous, living entirely on grain, and contrary to the old belief of being a voracious feeder. In accordance with government publications and the Chinese media a single sparrow eats 5 1/2 pounds of corn a year, thus a million of them consumed each year 2,500 tons of seed corn. For a country with a high rate of population growth and having to feed more hungry mouths year by year, the sparrow was a pest to be disposed of, at any cost.

But, how were they to be destroyed? Shooting was impracticable as gunpowder was expensive, even though gunpowder was supposed to have been invented in China. In the mean time, a Russian scientist announced that sparrows could not fly for 2 to 3 hours nonstop, before they fall exhausted to the ground. The Chinese authorities decided to put this theory into practice.

At length a major propaganda campaign was launched, aimed at mobilizing the entire population for the battle. Orders were soon issued making it imperative for everyone to participate, irrespective of sex, age or physical standing.

On the anticipated day (April 18) and hour (5 a.m.) "Operation-Sparrow" took off the ground. From the small hours noisy crowds swarmed the streets of Peking. Submitting to orders of the government or those in command of streets and housing schemes, or the stern calls of street loudspeakers and the radio, the whole population of Peking left their houses.

The milling crowds if men, women and children banged at metal pans, set off fire-crackers, raised old broom handles or sticks with rags tight to them at the flocks of birds flying above, all the while shouting at the top of their voice (certainly, the Chinese are past masters at this) Enthusiastic young men climbed on to roof tops or nearby trees, while the others remained in the streets or squares, home gardens and the open places, keeping up the halloo in unison. There common endeavor was to prevent the sparrows from alighting on roofs and the branches of trees.

The students of schools tried to bring down the birds on the wing with slings and catapults, which had been distributed to them by the teaching staff. The members of the Diplomatic Missions accredited in Peking joined the hunt with shotguns in hand from the premises of their respective embassies.

At the end of 48 hours of excitement and clamor, the exhausted sparrows began falling to the ground in large numbers. No sooner than they touched the ground men, women and children rushed up and dispatched the unfortunate creatures with the sticks and brickbats that were in readiness in their hands.

This went on for 72 hours during which no resident of Peking had a wink of sleep, including those physically unfit. If the sparrows fell from exhaustion their hunters too were on the point of doing so.

Some slipped from roofs or trees, and ended up with broken limbs,,, but the zeal of the others remained unflagging.

On April 21, orders went out to stop the hunt, and the whole city became strangely calm and quite, while parades were organized to show off the trophies of the chase. The final balance sheet of the hunt, which was conceivable under an authoritative regime showed a credit in the sense that the sparrows simply disappeared from the Chinese scene. But was the ultimate aim- a better harvest- achieved?

This is the sort of question to which one can get no answer. And even if one could, what is it now to the sparrows?

A western journalist domiciled in Peking at the time commented in his story thus, "It is difficult to know exactly what goes on in China, because the political propaganda gives quite contradictory accounts.

It is true that it was realized somewhat later that the sparrows also played a useful role in destroying the insects harmful to crops and so any mass extermination of them was an error of judgment, besides being a piece of criminal stupidity."