Pursuing rights and getting justice on China's ethnic frontier, 1949-1966

A Legal Controversy in Rural China, 1956

It seemed like just another ordinary fall day in a village of the Yi minority community in Yunnan Province, on China's southwestern border. As the sun rose over the glistening fields, families woke up and began their chores. Sometime later, their tasks completed, several young women, laden with recently harvested produce, met in the village square to go to the market town, as was their custom and duty. This was not an easy trip: Yunnan was a poor, mountainous province with few paved roads, railways, or motorized transport.