ABSTRACT
Zhaoxinlanrises early, quaffs a ladleful of cool water, and leaves her farmhouse before the June day grows too hot. She walks a mile down a dirt path to the family plot, passing acre after acre of golden wheat that seems to touch the sky. As she walks, a migrating cuckoo pipes its whimsical song from a nearby poplar. For Zhao, the cuckoo's call is the surest sign that harvest time has come again to her village in China's heartland. For the first time, millions of peasant women like Zhao have been left in charge of what was men's work in China for centuries: the grueling, never-ending production of food. As Maoist social controls have eased, women in Xiaodian and thousands of other villages have seen a revival of customs such as wife buying, concubinage, the arranged marriage of child brides, and the sale or abandonment of baby girls.
