When the Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) of the middle and late 1960s burst forth, the initial response both in China and the West seemed primarily to be one of mystification. The spectacle of severe splits among leaders long thought to be compatible, of armed struggles between factional units whose uniform pledges to Chairman Mao and the Party Center appeared to make their similarities greater than their differences, and of destructive Red Guards who were bent on "tearing down the old world to build a new one" was at first difficult to explain.

This is a collection of essays exploring the deep-rooted problems presented by the Three Gorges dam project that the Chinese government are trying to disguise or supress, brought together by Dai Qing, an investigative journalist, at the risk of her own freedom.