"How did ordinary people live through the extraordinary changes that swept across modern China? How did the "little people" cope with the epic upheavals that shook their lives? How did peasants transform themselves into urbanites? In this carefully researched study, Hanchao Lu weaves rich documentary data with ethnographic surveys and interviews to reconstruct the fabric of everyday life in China's largest and most complex city in the first half of this century."--BOOK JACKET.

"Today, in the post-Mao, post-Deng era, China faces a vigorous resurgence of paradoxes similar to those that surfaced at the end of the imperial era. At the same time, the pragmatism of the Chinese people endures, suggesting that the lessons of the past have broad implications for urban China and urban-rural relations in China at the beginning of the third millennium."--BOOK JACKET.