I started my field research in Shang village, Henan Province in October 2005. It was a rainy day, and the road was muddy, but we managed to keep ourselves dry and clean since we were in a car that took us all the way from the county seat to the township office. My friend Yu Jie had traveled together from the county seat to introduce me to officials at the Zhaoying township office. Soon after our arrival in Zhaoying, the township office unexpectedly announced that they had decided I should stay in Shang village, instead of Yu Jie's home village, which was the one I had chosen as a field site in a previous visit to the area. Yu Jie quietly suggested that I agree to whatever the office decided. After a phone call from the Zhaoying office to the Shang village Party Secretary, Zhishu, we returned to the car and drove to the village committee courtyard. Fang, the township official in charge of family planning, had been sent by the township office to introduce me to the village. It was already afternoon, and it was at very short notice that Zhishu quickly figured out a place for me, a complete stranger to Shang village to stay that night. I asked him if he could find me an old-style, one-story house, of the kind that at that time seemed to dominate Shang village, even though I had noticed many newly built two- and three-storey houses visible from the main village road. After Zhishu's careful review of potential hosts – he told me later that his major concern had been the issue of my safety as a woman researcher working alone – we met my first host, whom I called Ayi, in Zhishu's courtyard. Only Ayi and her daughter lived in their house. She initially declined the request to host me, insisting, “My house is awfully dirty.” Zhishu urged her to take me over to have a look and let me decide for myself.

Ayi's house looked perfectly “traditional” to me: it was a lovely courtyard with a three-room main house and a two-room side house, a dog, a cat, about twenty chickens, and ten ducks.