Fudan is one of China's few universities to survive the vicissitudes of this century's political upheavals, with a tradition of almost 80 years' standing. Many of the colleges which sprung up at the same time perished with the 1911 Revolution, and others of similar character disappeared in the reorganization of Chinese higher education in 1952. It may be significant, therefore, that Fudan was chosen by Chinese Communist leaders to become one of the main comprehensive universities for south China in 1952, which suggests that certain aspects of the tradition for which it was known were considered acceptable and worthy of continuation under the new people's government. Perhaps its development had demonstrated some small measure of success in the exacting task facing Chinese higher education in this century, that of creating a modern Chinese-style university on the ruins of the traditional education system whose values persisted in spite of the abolition of the Imperial examinations in 1905, the year in which Fudan was born.

Opportunities to revisit a remote field site studied many years before are relatively rare in anthropology generally, but when the location happens to be China, we simply do not expect them to occur. It is, therefore, all the more remarkable that the village of Kaixiangong, first presented to the scholarly world in Fei Xiaotong's Peasant Life in China, should have been further described by William R. Geddes in 1955 and by Fei himself after a 1957 visit. When invited by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) to visit China in the summer of 1981 to undertake a scientific study of my choice, I was intrigued when Professor Fei suggested I request permission to go to Kaixiangong, and delighted when it was granted. I stayed in the community four days and nights during September, and the following is based on information gathered then.

From 1955 onwards Mao Zedong developed a philosophical justification for his explosive interventions in Chinese politics by grounding his concepts in a peculiar Einsteinian epistemology. In retrospect, it is likely that already in the May Fourth period Mao Zedong understood the epistemological significance of the Einsteinian revolution in a peculiarly optimistic manner.

China's Marriage Law of 1980 went into effect on New Year's Day 1981, permitting women and men to marry at 20 and 22, respectively. This contrasts sharply with the late marriage requirements of the 1970s, whichstipulated 23 and 25 years for women and men in the rural areas and 25 and 28 years for their urban sisters and brothers. The new legal minimum ages for marriage caused an instant upsurge in the numbers of young people getting married in China. One scholar estimated that as many as 30 million marriages would take place in 1981 as millions of young women and men took advantage of the new legal minimum. It was later officially projected that first marriages in 1981 would probably reach at least 14 million, more than twice the number in 1980. And, because of the “baby boom” of the 1960s marriage rates are likely to remain high through the mid 1990s.

On 1 September 1982, 1,545 delegates and 145 alternates convened the 12th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. The meeting was announced in advance (at the seventh plenum of the 11th Central Committee, held in Beijing 4–10 August) and proceeded with well-rehearsed smoothness to its scheduled adjournment 15 days later. The meeting agenda conformed closely to established protocol, consisting of speeches and work reports, discussion and adoption of a new Party constitution, culminating in the election of new members to the Central Committee and other “standing” (i.e. permanently tenured) positions and convention of the first plenary meetings of these organs. The meeting began on 1 September with a relatively brief opening speech by Deng Xiaoping, the presiding chairman (though in a typical gesture to collective leadership there were no less than nine other presiding chairmen), and was followed by Hu Yaobang's comprehensive report and by speeches or reports by Ye Jianying, Chen Yun, Li Xiannian and others. These documents were all published as part of a general effort at greater publicity that included prior announcement of the dates of convention and adjournment, invitation of more than 70 responsible persons from democratic parties, non-Party patriots and other well-known personages from various circles to attend as observers (as had been done previously during the Eighth Congress), fairly detailed reporting of the election of deputies, their assembly and daily activities, arrangements and so forth, and even a sort of press conference that Zhu Muzhi, spokesman of the conference, held for Chinese and foreign reporters – although no foreign Communist Party members or foreign journalists were permitted to attend the Congress itself.