The Great Leap Forward was a campaign launched in 1958 by Mao Zedong's government to transform China quickly into an industrial and agricultural power. Farms were merged into huge collective units, grain was requisitioned at high quotas, and local officials often reported inflated harvests. The result was a catastrophic famine between 1959 and 1961 that killed tens of millions of people, with children among the hardest hit. Child mortality rose sharply during those years before falling again in the decades that followed. Today child mortality in China is below one percent, a figure that makes the earlier spike stand out even more clearly.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.