This book is the first comprehensive anthropological study of a rural Chinese community to be carried out by foreign anthropologists in the People's Republic of China since the Revolution of 1949. It is a diachronic investigation of rural Cantonese village life, with the pre-revolutionary period as its starting point. The major theme of the book is the analysis of revolutionary efforts to bring about social reform and economic development. Since 1949, such efforts have taken many forms, and have created diverse consequences. We examine the initial processes of reform, the Maoist period, and the post-Maoism of the present day. The pre-revolutionary period is reconstructed from personal accounts by the villagers, from historical documents made available locally, and from comparative material gathered over two decades of studying Cantonese peasants. The portrayal of the Maoist period is based on personal accounts by the villagers and on our fieldwork in Maoist rural China in 1979–80. The account of the transition from Maoist to post-Maoist society is based on return field trips in 1981, 1983, 1984, and 1985.

We have attempted to understand the local significance of one of the largest and most important events in contemporary world history by using the methodological and theoretical repertoire of the discipline of anthropology. Our fieldwork took place in Chashan district, located in Dongguan county, about half way between Hong Kong and Guangzhou. In 1979, Chashan was called a commune, and included the town of Chashan, with a population of 4,000, and 15 production brigades in the surrounding country-side.