This is a portrait of social change in the North China Plain which depicts how the world of the Chinese peasant evolved during an era of war and revolution and how it in turn shaped the revolutionary process. The authors spent a decade interviewing villagers and rural officials, exploring archives and investigating villagers with diverse resources and cultural traditions, and they describe both the promise and human tragedy of China's rural revolution. Exploring the decades before and after the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, the authors trace the growing economic desperation and cultural disintegration that led to the revolution, the reforms undertaken by the communist leadership that initially brought economic gains and cultural healing, and the tensions that soon developed between party and peasantry.