This article is based on a stay in Xin Cun village in Sichuan province during most of the month of March 1988. The participants of the field work were organized in four groups, dealing with agriculture, village industry, family Peter Fenger, Steen Folke, Allan Jsrgensen, Peter Milthers and Ole Odgaard and womens issues and organization and decision making. All groups carried out numerous interviews with village leaders and ordinary villagers, using formal questionnaires as well as informal checklists. All interviews were undertaken without accompanying officials, and no questionnaires were subject to official approval. Important knowledge was acquired when accomodated in the private homes of villagers, who patiently answered our innumerable questions.
We have chosen to concentrate on the occupation and income situation, as we succeeded in obtaining detailed quantitative data on these issues for each and every household in the village.
We are aware of the question of reliability. The data material is not without lacunae and inconsistencies, and some of these will be discussed in this presentation. However, we have no reason to believe that this detailed statistical material, obtained from the village authorities, should not be authentic and, generally speaking, correct. The interviews we conducted with numerous families both confirmed the overall validity and revealed some minor discrepancies.
