Guilty of Indigence

Janet Y. Chen is assistant professor of history and East Asian Studies at Princeton University.

"The book does a marvelous job of analyzing the discourse surrounding poverty in China. [I]t certainly belongs on the short list of pioneering studies ... that offer sophisticated analyses of the lives of illiterate, unprivileged men and women in Chinese cities in the decades before establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949."--Kristin Stapleton, American Historical Review "This book makes an important contribution to the field of modern Chinese history... Janet Y. Chen provides new insight into how the notion of poverty was redefined during this tumultuous and complicated period. Although the ideas and arguments are complex and sophisticated, this is a clearly argued and crisply written book, one that could be easily used in part or in whole in an upper division undergraduate course."--Hong-Ming Liang, Historian "This book is a veritable model of a social history monograph--one that aspiring PhD students would do well to emulate... It is unusual for a monograph so firmly placed within social history to be as attentive to the unenviable positions in which both weak governments and weak citizens found themselves, but in this Chen's work more than succeeds."--Julia C. Strauss, China Journal

• Acknowledgments vii A Note on Conventions ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Between Charity and Punishment 13 Chapter 2: "Parasites upon Society" 46 Chapter 3: "Living Ghosts" during the Nanjing Decade 86 Chapter 4: Beggars or Refugees? 128 Chapter 5: Keeping Company with Ghosts 173 Epilogue 213 Notes 233 Glossary 279 Bibliography 283 Index 303