ABSTRACT
The status system and mobility in a Chinese county of 69,231 inhabitants provided the necessary social laboratory for testing both framework and methods. It proved best to distinguish social mobility from general social and cultural changes; to restrict the definition of social mobility to the shifting in positions of individuals, families, and status groups; and to conceive the transition of "social object or value" as the effects of social mobility. Traditional Chinese society had two major groups: the peasantry and the gentry. The gentry was a status group that expressed a common heritage, a store of common traditions and sentiments. The gentry as a leisure class had its own standards and ideals. It might also encourage its members to be diligent, but a perfect gentleman worked with his brain rather than with his hands. The gentry was but one facet of Chinese social life, and Kunyang was only one of about 2,000 counties in China.
