This book is a collection of translations from Old Photos, a Chinese bimonthly publication launched in 1996 that presents photographs and narratives from ordinary readers and professional historians in a manner that proclaims: this is our history, not the history those above would have us believe. The magazine was concerned with the everyday lives of ordinary people while also covering the momentous, often traumatic, political life of the People's Republic. It became clear it would also serve as a forum and archive for people's experiences and reflections about life in the People's Republic. Old Photos presented an open format where readers' contributions were published alongside that of professional writers, historians', and novelists.

Accompanies an exhibition held at the J. Paul Getty Museum, 8 February-1 May 2011.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1873.

Each of the eight chapters takes a period of up to forty years and examines the medium through the lenses of art, science, social science, travel, war, fashion, the mass media and individual practitioners.-Back Cover.

As state control of private life in China has loosened since 1980, citizens have experienced an unprecedented family revolution—an overhaul of family structure, marital practices, and gender relationships. While the nuclear family has become a privileged realm of romance and individualism symbolizing the post-revolutionary “freedoms” of economic and affective autonomy, women’s roles in particular have been transformed, with the ideal “iron girl” of socialism replaced by the feminine, family-oriented “good wife and wise mother.” Problems and contradictions in this new domestic culture have been exposed by China's soaring divorce rate. Reading popular “divorce narratives” in fiction, film, and TV drama, Hui Faye Xiao shows that the representation of marital discord has become a cultural battleground for competing ideologies within post-revolutionary China. While these narratives present women’s cultivation of wifely and maternal qualities as the cure for family disintegration and social unrest, Xiao shows that they in fact reflect a problematic resurgence of traditional gender roles and a powerful mode of control over supposedly autonomous private life.

The family has long been viewed as both a microcosm of the state and a barometer of social change in China. It is no surprise, therefore, that the dramatic changes experienced by Chinese society over the past century have produced a wide array of new family systems. Where a widely accepted Confucian-based ideology once offered a standard framework for family life, current ideas offer no such uniformity. Ties of affection rather than duty have become prominent in determining what individuals feel they owe to their spouses, parents, children, and others. Chinese millennials, facing a world of opportunities and, at the same time, feeling a sense of heavy obligation, are reshaping patterns of courtship, marriage, and filiality in ways that were not foreseen by their parents nor by the authorities of the Chinese state. Those whose roots are in the countryside but who have left their homes to seek opportunity and adventure in the city face particular pressures as do the children and elders they have left behind. The authors explore this diversity focusing on rural vs. urban differences, regionalism, and ethnic diversity within China. Family Life in China presents new perspectives on what the current changes in this institution imply for a rapidly changing society.

An “immensely readable” journey through modern Chinese history told through the experiences of the author’s extended family (Christian Science Monitor). When journalist Scott Tong moved to Shanghai, his assignment was to start the first full-time China bureau for “Marketplace,” the daily business and economics program on public radio stations across the US. But for Tong the move became much more: an opportunity to reconnect with members of his extended family who’d remained there after his parents fled the communists six decades prior. Uncovering their stories gave him a new way to understand modern China’s defining moments and its long, interrupted quest to go global. A Village with My Name offers a unique perspective on China’s transitions through the eyes of regular people who witnessed such epochal events as the toppling of the Qing monarchy, Japan’s occupation during WWII, exile of political prisoners to forced labor camps, mass death and famine during the Great Leap Forward, market reforms under Deng Xiaoping, and the dawn of the One Child Policy. Tong focuses on five members of his family, who each offer a specific window on a changing country: a rare American-educated girl born in the closing days of the Qing Dynasty, a pioneer exchange student, a toddler abandoned in wartime who later rides the wave of China’s global export boom, a young professional climbing the ladder at a multinational company, and an orphan (the author’s daughter) adopted in the middle of a baby-selling scandal fueled by foreign money. Through their stories, Tong shows us China anew, visiting former prison labor camps on the Tibetan plateau and rural outposts along the Yangtze, exploring the Shanghai of the 1930s, and touring factories across the mainland—providing a compelling and deeply personal take on how China became what it is today. “Vivid and readable . . . The book’s focus on ordinary people makes it refreshingly accessible.” —Financial Times “Tong tells his story with humor, a little snark, [and] lots of love . . . Highly recommended, especially for those interested in Chinese history and family journeys.” —Library Journal (starred review)