At the end of the 20th century the attention of some historians focused to a remarkable extent on the experience of Chinese cities in the early decades of the century. This work brings together research by a number of key contributors to this scholarly literature and offers a broadly informed, collective assessment of the late-Qing and Republican elite project fundamentally to remake cities.

Joseph W. Esherick was born in Marin County, north of San Francisco, in 1942 and studied Chinese history at Harvard (B.A., 1964, summa cum laude) and UC Berkeley (Ph.D., 1971). He taught at the University of Oregon from 1971 to 1990, when he moved to the University of California at San Diego, where he is now a Distinguished Professor in the History Department. Having participated in the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s at Berkeley, he has always been interested in social movements: why ordinary people join them, how they relate to social structures and cultural practices, and how they affect larger political developments. He travels frequently to China for research and lectures; and in addition to teaching and writing Chinese history, he most enjoys spending time with his family, hiking, skiing and tennis.