Organize authentic records from ancient Chinese history depicting the extreme suffering of common people and social collapse:

During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the "Nan Shi" records: "The population registration of the world has nearly lost half."
This refers to that the registered population across the country has almost been halved. Continuous wars, agricultural neglect, large numbers of people fleeing or starving to death. From the perspective of national statistical systems, the population has experienced a "waist-cut" disappearance.

In the Northern Song period, the "Jile Bian" records: "The price of human flesh is cheaper than that of dogs and pigs."
This means that the market price of human flesh was even lower than that of dog or pig meat. This is not rhetoric but a real transaction during famine. People are no longer regarded as members of society but merely as a source of meat, and the value of life has completely collapsed.

At the end of the Eastern Han, the "Zizhi Tongjian" records: "A great famine in Guandong, starving people flying west to die."
This describes a severe famine in the Guandong region, where people fled westward in groups, only to die of starvation along the way. Fleeing is no longer about survival but about delaying death, with corpses piling up along the route.

During the Western Jin period, the "Taiping Yulan" quotes an old history record: "After the Yongjia chaos, there were not more than a hundred living people in Chang'an."
This indicates that after the Yongjia chaos, the former imperial capital Chang'an had fewer than a hundred living people. The imperial power collapsed, the city fell, and the population was nearly wiped out, with the city emptied in a short time.

During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the "Zizhi Tongjian" records: "Select weak men to supply the army’s food."
This means that, under grain shortages, weak men were chosen to serve as military rations. This is not individual crime but an organized act. People are treated as consumable resources at the systemic level, with the state machinery directly involved in cannibalism.

During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the "Zizhi Tongjian" records: "Infants placed on tables, cut into pieces as dried meat."
This describes infants being placed on chopping boards and cut into dried meat for storage. Infants were chosen because of their tender flesh and ease of handling, with ethics and kinship completely invalidated under extreme famine.

During the Eastern Han period, the "Hou Han Shu" records: "Over ten thousand common people starved to death in the city."
This indicates that in one city, over 100,000 people died of starvation. Encirclement, starvation, and lack of aid turned death into a slow, collective process, transforming the entire city into a large death scene.

During the Eastern Han period, the "Hou Han Shu" records: "People in Hanoi and Henan regions began to eat each other."
This describes that people in the Hanoi and Henan areas started cannibalizing each other. Such behavior was no longer isolated but a regional phenomenon, with society crossing the survival bottom line.

During the Eastern Han period, the "Hou Han Shu" records: "People cannibalize and eat, white bones scattered on the roads."
This describes people eating each other, with leftover white bones discarded casually on roads. The scale of death was so large that even burial became unnecessary, and life lost all ritual and dignity.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the "Ming Shi" records: "Great famine, all plants and trees exhausted, plagues spread, and people resorted to cannibalism."
This describes an extreme famine where all vegetation was consumed, coupled with outbreaks of plague, ultimately leading to cannibalism. Natural disasters, institutional failure, and war overlapped, causing the collapse of the entire social system.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the "Ming Shi" records: "Mother eats her dead child, husband eats his dead wife."
This indicates that mothers ate their deceased children, and husbands ate their deceased wives. This was not active killing but a complete breakdown of kinship and ethics due to hunger, with survival becoming the only logic.

During the Western Jin period, the "Jin Shu" records: "When officials see a commoner’s beautiful wife, they kill and eat her."
This describes local officials killing and eating women they find beautiful. Cannibalism was not only a result of famine but also a display of power, with life entirely subject to the ruler’s will.

These historical records demonstrate a recurring fact: in ancient China, once war, famine, and institutional collapse occurred simultaneously, society would not "struggle to maintain order" but would rapidly fall below the bottom line. Populations could be halved in a short time, cities could become entirely deserted, and people in extreme environments would be redefined as food, resources, or even tools of power. These horrors are not occasional "dark episodes" but are repeatedly and calmly documented as the normal state by official histories.

The fact that these atrocities are recorded without embellishment precisely indicates that such collapse was not rare at the time. Cannibalism being written into history is not because it is shocking, but because it was sufficiently widespread and typical. From these texts, we see that the fragility of ancient society lay not in disasters themselves but in the fact that ordinary people had almost no buffer space. Once land, grain, or order was lost, life quickly lost its value; kinship, ethics, and law would give way to survival instincts. In a highly unstable society lacking relief and safety nets, individual fates could plunge into abyss at any moment, and this descent often occurs quietly, systematically, and irreversibly.