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The purpose of this study is to provide a picture of the organizations, economy, administration and lifestyles in three small towns occupying very different positions within a developmental spectrum in China in the late 1990s. The economic transformation of China over the two decades from 1980 was a significant development. China had been of limits to Western scholarship, but "a honeymoon interlude" after the 1979 normalization of relations between Washington and Beijing allowed scholars to visit China. The intrusion of foreign researchers soon proved to be too intrusive for Chinese villagers, and so over the 1980s the growth of Chinese studies in North America, Europe and Australasia was not matched by an increase in research access. Also the contextualization of primary data remains problematic, as the routines of collection and publication of official statistics in economy and society remain inconsistent and vague. This study is essentially a snapshot of circumstances, conditions and opinions in three Chinese towns in the mid-to-late 1990s. It shows the increasing tensions between aspirations for economic betterment and the maintenance of an amenable human and biophysical environment. The study began in 1994 in the towns of Neiguan zhen, Yuantan zhen and Shengze zhen, and this book presents an amalgam of qualitative findings, to construct descriptive, socioeconomic, administrative and environmental profiles of the areas.