VILLAGES WALK 40-YEAR PATH TO WEALTH

Reform brings far-reaching changes to Jiangsu

The book Peasant Life in China, written by prestigious anthropologist and sociologist Fei Xiaotong in the 1930s, lifted the veil on the nation's rural areas to the outside world by documenting traditional life in a small village in Suzhou, Jiangsu province.

Fei was a pioneering researcher and professor noted for his studies of China's ethnic groups. He was born in Wujiang, Jiangsu, in 1910 and died in Beijing in 2005.