This rare collection of personal letters presents not only a huge amount of original and disaggregated data but also constitutes an oral history of social life in China that is unintentionally being recorded by the authors.

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.
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.