ABSTRACT
In China, the period before the national ‘Liberation’ of 1949 or the Japanese invasion in 1937 – or in Shaanbei before the establishment of the Communist base area in 1936 – was far from the stable ‘golden age’ often portrayed even in Chinese sources. However, it will serve to describe the status and functions of the chuishou before the radical extension of state control with the commune system in the 1950s. Though we will observe limited change in context and sound into the twenty-first century, many of these comments also apply more or less to the present.
