Introduction : Ba Jin's fiction and twentieth-century Chinese history
Mingfeng : the life of a Chinese slave girl
The patriarch : Chengdu's gentry
Juexin's city : the Chengdu economy
Sedan-chair bearers, beggars, actors, and prostitutes : the worlds of the urban poor
Students, soldiers, and warlords : protest and warfare in the city
Qin : Chengdu and the "new woman"
Juehui : revolution, reform, and development in Chengdu
Epilogue : family and city in China's twentieth-century revolutions.