ABSTRACT
LUTS’UN is located in a fertile valley, about 100 km. west of Kunming, close to the Burma Road. We started our study with this village because we found here a simple form of economy in which neither commerce nor industry plays an important part. The main occupation of the people is the management and cultivation of farms, and the villagers are either petty landowners or landless laborers. Landlords with large holdings are lacking, and absentee owners are few and insignificant. It seems to us that this village represents a basic type of farming community in interior China. The life of the peasants is characterized by the use of traditional farming techniques on rather fertile land and under a strong pressure of population. In these fundamental ways Luts’un represents, in miniature, traditional China. It is also logically a prototype of the types of villages described later, where the development of handicraft industries and the commercial influence of the town complicate the structure.
