Will the Boat Sink the Water?: the Life of China’s Peasants

China’s 900 million peasants continue to toil under a feudalistic system even as the nation enjoys economic prosperity built, in part, at their expense. The authors, husband-and-wife Chinese journalists, spent three years in Wu’s home province of Anhui to uncover the poverty of peasants betrayed by Mao’s revolution and bullied by petty bureaucrats, their labor exploited and their voices stifled. This expose was banned by the Chinese government, and the journalists were sued for libel by government officials. Drawing on interviews with villagers, the authors offer intimate portraits of the struggles of peasants that read with the ease and familiarity of stories but carry the urgency of news reports of lives about which little has been written. A local peasant who complains of taxing and accounting irregularities that rob the village is killed; peasants resist a corrupt deputy village chief who appropriates their land and public funds. Readers interested in the unseen and unreported lives of Chinese peasants will appreciate this revealing book. Vanessa Bush Copyright © American Library Association.