"Most people cut down to two meals, or even one when winter set in. Thus undernourished they moved..."

Most people cut down to two meals, or even one when winter set in. Thus undernourished they moved about as little as possible and tried to conserve their strength until spring… The big problem facing the peasants over the years was not to obtain some variety in their diet but to find anything to eat at all. They often had to piece out their meager harvest of grain with bran, chaff, wild herbs from the hills or even the leaves from the trees or tree bark as the ch’un huang (spring hunger) set in.

Each day that one survived was a day to be thankful for and so, throughout the region, in fat years and in lean, the common greeting came to be not “Hello” or “How are you?” but a simple, heartfelt “Have you eaten?”