Fanshen

More than forty years after its initial publication, William Hinton's Fanshen continues to be the essential volume for those fascinated with China's revolutionary process of rural reform and social change. A pioneering work, it is a marvellous and revealing look into life in the Chinese countryside, where tradition and modernity have had both a complimentary and caustic relationship in the years since the Chinese Communist Party first came to power. It is a rare, concrete record of social struggle and transformation, as witnessed by a participant. It continues to offer profound insight into the lives of peasants and China's complex social processes.