ABSTRACT
Zhenhua and Shuqin were sitting on opposite sides of the aisle, their backs to the audience, facing a long empty table. Shuqin was fiddling with a piece of paper—her marriage certificate. She was suing Zhenhua for divorce. One September day, Shuqin had taken her clothes and her quilt and, with her sister's help, had moved out of her husband's family home. Now, two years later, her case was about to be heard in the Hongkou People's District Court in Shanghai, one of thousands of local courts of this type. A slight twenty-eight-year-old woman with short black hair, Shuqin worked as a statistician in a government office. She came to court wearing beige slacks and a patterned blouse. Zhenhua, Shuqin's slim, tall, thirty-one-year-old husband, worked as a laborer on Shanghai's waterfront. Wearing khaki pants and a blue cotton Mao jacket, he sat slouching forward, as if folded into himself.
