With consolidation of basic military and political control of the China mainland the Communist Party leadership faced a problem...a small political elite committed to social and economic change saw its revolution threatened from both peasant conservatives and the life style of a small urban skill group. As Mao Tse-tung and his supporters phrased it in the mid-1950s, "Rightist conservative ideology...presents a most serious threat to our Party." (268-269)
--Richard H. Solomon, Mao's revolution and the Chinese political culture
Yang Jiang's only novel is divided into three parts, each with many short chapters; part 1 is called 采葑采菲 : "collect the chaff to collect the wheat."
The year is 1949, and educated Shanghai dwellers watch anxiously as the Chinese Communist Party consolidates control over the region and forces the Nationalists out. Anti-Communist teachers and writers all try to leave if they can.
We meet Wan Ying, who is facing hard times in these circumstances. Her husband, the rather dastardly and deceitful Yu Nan, is carrying on an affair with the eminently practical, if conniving and manipulative, Miss Hu. Yu Nan hopes to abandon his wife in Shanghai and leave China for a job obtained by Miss Hu.
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