As for Mao's great medical advances, I've actually been in a number of medical facilities in China. My wife survived and later became a physician at the second best hospital in Beijing (and presumably one of the best in the country). This was the hospital where the mid-level communist party members go for treatment (no proletarians need apply). All I can say is: Holy crap! I've also been to a medical clinic in the village where my wife's family is from. My advice to travelers: don't get sick in China. Get sick in Taiwan or Hong Kong.

Stalin (who would know) once said that one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. When my wife tells me about her childhood (she only does this when I ask about it) it's the little details that chill me, not the "statistics" of her life. Here's a few:

She and her friends used to want a taste of sweetness so much (the Great Helmsman apparently considered candy a bourgeois excess) that they used to pull the bodies of honeybees apart and suck on them to get at the nectar. (This from a woman who today loves animals more than anyone I know.)

When my wife was in grade school she got so hungry one day that she snuck off into a field near her school and dug up a single sweet potato and ate it raw. She was caught and, for this horrendous crime, her principle put her on limited rations (and she was already hungry all the time) for an indefinite period. She became weaker and weaker as the months went by. Finally, after six months of this constant hunger, one of her teachers became alarmed at her state and went to the principle and asked to have her rations restored to her previous (limited) status. The principle's response? "Oh, I had forgotten she was still on limited rations. I only meant for that to last a month. Yes, restore her food quota." This was the little girl who is now my wife.