Deborah S. Davis, Professor of Sociology at Yale University, is the author of "Long Lives: Chinese Elderly and the Communist Revolution" (1991) and coeditor of "Chinese Society on the Eve of Tiananmen" (1990), "Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era" (California, 1993), and "Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China" (1995).