CHINA. The "Great Leap Forward". September 1958. Commune of Shiu Shin (310.000 inhabitants living in 280 villages divided into 7 Popular Communes spread over 600 square kilometers). Peasants were encouraged to construct their own smelting owens. Here, peasants work their wind boxes. Every half hour these owens smelted about one hundred pounds of iron used by the peasants to make their own farm tools. But the homemade metal proved too brittle and the tools snapped in two. Such labor was done after the normal work day spent in the fields or rice paddies.