Private Life under Socialism

What it is about

Private Life under Socialism is Yan Yunxiang’s village study of love, intimacy, and family change in rural China from 1949 to 1999. He follows courtship, conjugality, intergenerational power, and the rise of a more private emotional life under socialist and reform-era conditions. The book is the necessary companion to From the Soil for a later century: ethnography of how intimate life actually changed in one place. It is anthropological research, not a dating manual and not a policy brief for today’s cities alone.

Questions it can answer

• What changes in love, intimacy, and family does Yan report from 1949 to 1999?
• How does village ethnography complement From the Soil for a later century?
• What happens to intergenerational power as conjugality becomes more private?

What you will not find

• A how-to for urban online dating in the 2020s
• Nationwide statistics replacing the village case
• Therapy scripts for one couple’s conflict