The transformation of China from a poor rural country to an economic and geopolitical powerhouse is one of the great stories of our contemporary world. One of the central features of that transformation has been rapid urbanization: today more than half of the Chinese population lives in cities, and China has more cities over one million in population than either the United States or Europe. The flip side of the story of rapid urbanization is the crisis of the countryside. As migrant laborers have flooded out of rural villages, what has happened to the rural communities that were once the center of Chinese economic, social and cultural life? That is the question a group of Chinese researchers set out to answer in their study of the classic issues of social analysis: family and lineage, social stratification, personal networks and patterns of interaction, annual and life style rituals, village politics and elite formation, and social and market relations between countryside and cities.