This landmark study of Zengbu, a Cantonese community, is the first comprehensive analysis of a rural Chinese society by foreign anthropologists since the Revolution in 1949. Jack and Sulamith Potter examine the revolutionary experiences of Zengbu's peasant villagers and document the rapid changeover from Maoist to post-Maoist China. In particular, they seek to explain the persistence of the deep structure of Chinese culture through thirty years of revolutionary praxis. The authors assess the continuities and changes in rural China, moving from the traditional social organization and cultural life of the pre-revolutionary period through the series of large-scale efforts to implement planned social change which characterized Maoism - land reform, collectivization, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. They examine in detail late Maoist society in 1979–80 and go on to describe and analyse the extraordinary changes of the post-Mao years, during which Zengbu was decollectivized, and traditional customs and religious practices reappeared.

"If you were going to read one book to become informed about the social, political, economic, and cultural impacts of the Chinese Revolution in rural China and trends after the decline of Mao Tse-tsung's towering influence on it, this would be an excellent choice....well-crafted, highly informative." Journal of Anthropological Research

"The tight fabric of the book is dense with factual detail and social scientific theory, happily seasoned with biographical accounts of individual actors in the drama over the decades." B.E. Wallacker, Choice

"As one of the first major ethnographic investigations of rural society in the People's Republic, Potter and Potter's book deserves widespread attention....an impressive ethnography. It should be of interest to all who study rural China, regardless of disciplne." Andrew B. Kipnis, Journal of Asian and African Studies