Prosperity's Predicament

Isabel Brown Crook is professor emerita at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Christina Kelley Gilmartin (1946–2012) was professor of history at Northeastern University. Yu Xiji (1914–2006) was professor emerita of child psychology at Teachers’ Training College in Beipei, Sichuan. Gail Hershatter is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and past president of the Association for Asian Studies. Emily Honig is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Prosperity was a rural West China township of 1,500 households when the originators of this study arrived there in 1940 to conduct a social survey for a 'rural reconstruction' effort launched by Chinese reformers. The two women befriended the locals, gathering data on their livelihoods and many stories of small town life. More than 70 years later, the data and stories have been analyzed and interpreted with the help of three noted scholars of modern Chinese history. The result is a fascinating portrait of a village during a time of much hardship and war. The efforts of the Nationalist Chinese government and its allies to ban opium and gambling and alleviate poverty failed for the most part, the authors argue, due to their inability to dislodge entrenched interests that controlled opium, salt, taxes, and the military conscription process. The working out of power struggles over these issues, as well as women's and men's desperate strategies for surviving in this harsh world, are described with an immediacy that is invaluable. Although the war against Japan was being fought on distant battlefields, Prosperity clearly suffered its ill effects. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.

• IntroductionGail Hershatter and Emily HonigPart I: InsidersChapter 1: The Market Way of LifeChapter 2: Living Off the Land: Farm LaborChapter 3: Not Far Afield: Family Survival StrategiesChapter 4: Lineages, Landlords, and the Local Body PoliticChapter 5: The Paoge and Informal PowerPart II: OutsidersChapter 6: Wartime ReformersChapter 7: Taking Health Care PublicChapter 8: Marriage: Reformed and UnreformedChapter 9: Of Money and MenChapter 10: Trial of StrengthGlossaryWorks Cited