Covering more than 20 years of social life under collectivization, village cadre Zhou's work journals contain a gold mine of information waiting to be explored and uncovered.

Zhang Letian is Professor of Sociology and the founding director of the Center for Data and Research on Contemporary Social Life, the Development Institute at Fudan University. He is one of the pioneer Chinese scholars researching rural social life during the collectivization period and best known for his monograph on the rise and fall of the People's Commune system.
Xi Fuqun, Ph.D. (Fudan University) is Professor of Sociology at Soochow University. His research focuses on politics and social life in contemporary China.

Yunxiang Yan, Ph.D. (1993, Harvard), is Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Los Angeles. He has published three monographs, respectively, on gift-giving and social networks, transformation of private life, and individualization of society in China.