That book is quite widely criticized. Not trying to defend Mao or the Great Famine, but with anecdotes like that I find this quote apt:
"With a person as divisive as Mao, both because of his complex history and because of what he represents to different groups, if becomes an almost impossible task to sift through the contradictions of supposed first hand accounts."
"With a person as divisive as Mao, both because of his complex history and because of what he represents to different groups, if becomes an almost impossible task to sift through the contradictions of supposed first hand accounts."
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d3s00b/did_m...