🔥😰👉Chengdu’s “People’s Big Canteens” Are Back — And History’s Shadow Is Rising Again A recent video circulating online shows the emergence of “People’s Big Canteens” (全民大食堂) in Chengdu. The promotional message claims that within a three-kilometer radius, no one cooks at home anymore, and the model is now being copied across the country. The footage features large woks of food being stir-fried, people lining up with trays, and diners sitting at long communal tables. The captions emphasize that it is “cheaper than cooking yourself and safer than eating out,” with “hygienic ingredients, no frozen food, and no pre-made dishes.” On the surface, it looks like a convenient community service — affordable, convenient, and clean. But many Chinese people watching it feel an immediate chill: Isn’t this exactly the same as the “big canteens” of the past? History: How the Great Leap Forward’s Communal Dining Halls Starved Millions In 1958, Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward. Rural China was rapidly organized into people’s communes, and public canteens (公共食堂) were forcibly imposed. The system worked like this: •Families were required to hand over their pots, pans, grain, and livestock to the collective. •Private cooking was banned or heavily restricted. •Everyone had to eat at the canteen. At first, the slogan was “eat as much as you want.” •Massive waste followed — leftover food was simply thrown away. •Local cadres inflated production figures layer by layer, while real grain was heavily requisitioned by the state. The result: food supplies were quickly exhausted through consumption and waste. Between 1959 and 1961, China suffered the most severe man-made famine in human history — the Great Chinese Famine. Conservative estimates put the death toll at 15 to 30 million; some scholars estimate over 45 million. In provinces such as Sichuan, Henan, and Anhui, corpses littered the land and cannibalism occurred. The public canteens were one of the central drivers of the disaster. They completely stripped farmers of control over their own food, giving grassroots cadres the power of life and death over who ate and how much. By the time the canteens collapsed and were forced to close, it was already too late. Today: Why Are “Big Canteens” Returning? The community canteens being promoted in places like Chengdu are nominally “voluntary” and framed as convenience services. Yet the propaganda language is strikingly similar: no need to cook yourself, more economical, more reliable, no one nearby cooks anymore, and the whole country should follow the example. Many comments online immediately connect it to history: •“Last time they ate up all the grain this way.” •“Sitting and eating until the mountain collapses.” •“They never learned the lesson.” •“Once everyone can only eat at designated canteens, when the porridge has no vegetables or meat, who will dare speak up?” With the economy slowing, youth unemployment high, and local governments under fiscal pressure, low-price canteens are a common tool to attract people, control consumption, and reduce household spending. Once dependence forms, the function of private kitchens weakens, and individual control over food is further eroded. History has already written the lesson clearly: when a regime begins large-scale promotion of “everyone come eat at the canteen,” the real danger is not the canteen itself, but the underlying deprivation of personal autonomy and control over food. Last time, tens of millions starved. They did not reflect. Now they are trying it again. The ending was written long ago.