"The village was full of the walking dead," remembers Yan Lianke, now 53, slumping away from his desk and shaking his head. It is a crisp Sunday evening as we talk in Yan's office, where he works as a professor, amid the vacant halls of Beijing's Renmin University. The room is cold and bare: a lone bookshelf stands empty against the fading whitewashed walls and Yan courteously hands out paper cups filled with hot green tea. The kettle sits on the floor and is the only accessory in the room.

"Up to 30 million people lost their lives during the Three Years of Natural Disasters [the 1958-1961 famine that followed Mao's calamitous Great Leap Forward]. The intellectuals in China chose to keep silent," says Yan emphatically. "This time, I had to find a way to make my voice heard."

attached to: Dream of Ding Village