Description
Trade Review"A faithful and meticulous transcription of her mother’s narrative. . . She has done a great service not only to Chen Huiqin, but also to readers who would like to understand the transformation of village life currently underway in China."
-- Richard King * Pacific Affairs *
"This book offers invaluable insights into the social history of rural China from a peasant perspective. Indeed, it reflects China’s history in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and does so in a much more nuanced way than other Chinese memoirs available on the Western book market."
* Nan Nu: Men, Women, & Gender in China *
"Chen Huiqin’s memoir, Daughter of Good Fortune, provides a rare glimpse of life in rural China during the twentieth century."
* Twentieth-Century China *
Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments by Shehong Chen
Introduction by Delia Davin
1. Ancestral Home
2. War and Revolution
3. Benefiting from the New Marriage Law
4. Rushing into Collective Life
5. The Great Leap Forward
6. “No Time for Meals All Year Round”
7. Years of Ordeal
8. Reaching Beyond Peasant Life
9. Changes in the Family
10. Farewell to Collective Life
11. Rural Customs and Urban Life
12. A House-Purchasing Frenzy
13. Crossing Borders and Leaving the Ancestral Village
14. Between the Living and the Dead
15. All Our Children Are “Plump Seeds”
16. Return to Ancestral Land
Glossary
Index
