A Street in China

A short and amusing book, outlining the authors time living in a small back laneway with seven houses, in an industrial area of Shanghai from 1948. Tucked in behind a tea shop and the landlords agents house, the laneway is shared with an workyard, making coal briquettes. Over the back wall, a factory processing pigskins.
The author is an American woman, married to a Chinese man -they are neither very wealthy or very privilaged.
Mostly the book outlines the gossip and goings on of the neighbours and their families, the ongoing disputes with the landlord and the landlords agent, and then the appearance of the representative of the Family Women's Organisation, whose role it was to assist the forming of a Lane Residents Association.
It is a very easy read, and holds a certain amount of amusement the whole way through, but I can't help feeling there is just a little bit of Communist propaganda in the way the collective approach to issues achieves the results that benefit ‘the people', who win out against the landlord and the factory owner etc. However, it is interesting to read a book written not from a Chinese perspective, or a visiting foreigner, but from an American immersed in a Chinese lifestyle without any of the benefits normally associated with being a foreigner living in China - money, political power and a more isolated way of life.