The Promise of the Revolution: Stories of Fulfillment and Struggle in China's Hinterland

The common Western image of China is confined to the large cities of the country's relatively wealthy east coast. But what does the country look like to most Chinese, those from the vast hinterland? The Promise of the Revolution reflects the day-to-day realities of the hundreds of millions of people in China's interior regions, fifty years after Communist takeover.

A half-century ago, Mao Zedong proclaimed that "the Chinese people have stood up." Yet most of China's millions lay in abject poverty. What has become of the promises of the revolution? Has anything changed? Wright's years of observation and conversation at the grassroots level in Guizhou, western China's poorest province—from hiking high into mountain villages, to traveling with migrant laborers, to retracing the Long March trail, even to golfing with the province's most affluent—reveal a rich blend of human fulfillment, disappointment, and perseverance.

This unusually perceptive and personal account, with its vivid immediacy, educates and entertains, but most important, it makes an original and invaluable contribution to our understanding of China's hidden majority.