RAPPORTO DA UN VILLAGGIO CINESE | 1965 | JAN MYRDAL

Rapporto da un villaggio cinese is a socio-ethnographic inquiry into life in Liu Ling, a farming village in the Shensi province of China, observed in 1962 by Jan Myrdal. The book documents how ordinary villagers, party officials, teachers, doctors, and midwives perceive, narrate, and live through the revolutionary transformations. Myrdal aims for a vivid, ground-level portrait: not a general theory but a series of personal testimonies and observations that reveal daily life under communist rural policies. Themes include collectivization, ideology and political consciousness, cultural and social change, and the gap between official slogans and lived reality. It occupies an important position for understanding rural China in the early communist era, especially by Western audiences.