This book opens up new topics in modern Chinese literary history: the intimate lives of modern China's most famous literary couple; real and imagined love-letters in modern Chinese literature; and the contents, functions, and values of privacy held by one couple in twentieth-century China as shown by a comparison between the edited and unedited versions of their letters.

Broadens our understanding of the culture and society of the largest metroplois in South China between the two World Wars

Singles out land as a means of production and places it in the context of one of the world's largest and most populous countries undergoing institutional reform

Analyzes China's transition from an administered labor system towards the creation of a labor market