Urban-Rural Networks: A Conference Report

14 Lianda' s history, the December 1 movement, and a number of people at Kunming Teachers College were involved in it. 1· I brought with me an enthusiasm for my subject and a readiness to exchange views and materials with my hosts. e. Great international events: Kumning would not even be a glint in my eye were it not for the statesmanship of Kissinger and Zhou, Nixon and Mao, Carter and Dang. Nor is it likely that l{tmming would have been as friendly as it was bad not some of the tens of thousands of Gis who passed throusb in the 1940s left a good impression. 9. Sheer luck: Somehow I stumbled on the right town (Xunm1ng), the right institution (a small teachers college that had sufficiently recovered from the Cultural Revolution to respond creatively to a new era), and the right people - the wa.nn, imaginative, and altruistic folks at Kun•ing Teachers College who made it all come together. Was my experience in Kunming unique? I think so, but I will cheerfully reassess that judpent if my account is followed by similar reports from colleagues who lived elsewhere. Our slc:rgan for the new era in Sino-American academic exchange should be: "Two, three, many Kunmings!" u:gB.AN=R1JRAL Nm'WOBKS: ! OONFERENCE REPQRT Susan Mann Jones. Stanford, CaJ.ifo:rnia. A conference on Urban-Rural Networks in Chinese Society, sponsored by the Joint· Collmittee on Contemporary Cbina of the A.GU;/SSRC was held at the Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island, Michigan, .August 28- September 2, 1979. While the subject of the conference was urban-rural networks, most of the papers focwsed on social chaDse in cities with reference to the effect of these cbanges Oil urban-rural relations. In a larger sense, there.f'ore, the papers can be used to draw attention to the emerging cultural gap that divided adna's largest oities from her rural areas during the late 19th aDd early 2oth centuries. The papers offered examples o.f' the ways in which this gap vas expressed in the changing institutions, intentions, and goals o.f' residents of larger oities. They showed that tlle changes eD.COIIP&SSed elements of traditional cultural style and could not be understood as "Westernization." And they suggested tbat loverlevel county seats did not separate themselves .f'roa the structure· o.f' ra.ra.l. life and politics in the saae way that their larger urban counterparts did. Instead they remained tied to the traditional networks joining city and countryside in the Chinese polity. The subject of urban-rural differences in China has occupied an anomolous place in the OODlparative historical and sociological literature because scholars have argued that traditional