Explores the social and cultural significance of Chinese communist legal practice in constructing marriage and gender relations in the turbulent period from 1940 to 1960.

Xiaoping Cong is a scholar of late imperial and twentieth-century China. Her previous book, Teachers' Schools and the Making of the Modern Chinese Nation-State, 1897-1937 (2007), was awarded a prize from the Chinese Historians in the United States society (CHUS) in 2008. Professor Cong has published a number of refereed journal articles and book chapters in both English and Chinese in the United States, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia and the Netherlands. She has also received several prestigious research grants, from Fulbright (2008-9), ACLS (2008-9) and AHA (2006). She was the President of the CHUS from 2011 to 2013, and is currently the secretary-treasurer (2014-16) of the Historical Society of Twentieth-Century China (HSTCC).

Introduction; Part I. Locality, Marriage Practice and Women: 1. The case of Feng v. Zhang: marriage reform in a revolutionary region; 2. The appeal: women, love, marriage, and the revolutionary state; Part II. Legal Practice and New Principle: 3. The new adjudication: the judicial construction in marriage reform; 4. A new principle in the making: from 'freedom' to 'self-determination' of marriage through legal practice; Part III. Politics and Gender in Construction: 5. Newspaper reports: casting a new democracy in village communities; 6. The Qin opera and the ballad: from rebellious daughters to social mothers; 7. The Ping opera and movie: nationalizing the new marriage practice and politicizing the state-family, 1949-1960; Epilogue: 'Liu Qiao'er', law, and zi-zhu: beyond 1960; Bibliography; Index.