This book translates and contextualizes the recollections of men and women who built, lived, and worked in some of the factory compounds relocated from China’s most cosmopolitan city—Shanghai. Small Third Line factories became oases of relatively prosperous urban life among more impoverished agricultural communities. These accounts, plus the guiding questions, contextual notes, and further readings accompanying them, show how everyday lives fit into the sweeping geopolitical changes in China and the world during the Cold War era. Furthermore, they reveal how the Chinese Communist...