Yuan-Tsung Chen gives a very engaging account of Ling-ling, a young girl from a Shanghai rich class family, who joins the revolution to carry out the land reform in a remote village in NorthWest China in 1950. The most interesting aspect of Chen's writing is her ability to portray not oly the miserable living conditions of those Chinese peasants, but also the male resistance to let women be treated as equals.

Mao's ideas take a new dimension in the context of daily life in this village. If I had been living such a hopeless existence, I would have also loved his communism!! I don't give this book 5 stars only because it drags a little bit a times.