This empirically rich and analytically engaging book draws on archives and oral history in Zouping county, Shandong province, and devotes each chapter to a distinctive period in the building of China's modern educational institutions. The study reveals how macro-level historical shifts interact with educational reforms to impact on the lives of rural individuals, and how their responses shape community-level policy formulation and implementation. Educational reforms therefore form the basis for a wider study of cultural, socio-economic and political processes in 20th-century China.