The stories collected here illuminate two recent phenomena in China. The first migration-the "up to the mountains, down to the villages" movement of the late 1960s to 1970s, where approximately twelve to fourteen million educated urban youth left the cities to work on farms, and the large voluntary migration since the 1990s of tens of millions of peasants into the cities.

The stories collected here illuminate two recent phenomena in China. The first migration-the "up to the mountains, down to the villages" movement of the late 1960s to 1970s, where approximately twelve to fourteen million educated urban youth left the cities to work on farms, and the large voluntary migration since the 1990s of tens of millions of peasants into the cities.