An anthropologist caught up in a momentous historical event presents a unique study in which the unprecedented 1989 Chinese People's Movement is analyzed against the background of eight months of anthropological fieldwork in Beijing.

The fieldwork began as a study of the dynamics of Chinese state socialist society under the impact of ten years of reform, approaching the problem from the perspective of the common Beijing resident. Pieke established that the increased role of the market economy and the use of personal connections forced Beijing citizens to engage in actions going against the grain of socialist ideology in which many still believed.

Ideology and practice had increasingly little to do with each other and a deeply-felt moral crisis of society was the result.

Then came the People's Movement, a 'total event' which sucked people into its vortex and which cut them off from all other concerns, suspending them in a state of disequilibrium. Commonplace activities which normally filled their day were replaced by an active involvement in the affairs of the nation. The People's Movement gave the opportunity to translate mounting frustration into focused political action. In the end, this process could only be stopped by violent repression on June 4th.

During that fateful night, the Chinese Communist Party showed that socialism as a viable ideological system was dead in China. Disenchantment had been turned into contempt for politics and a seasoned cynicism about society. Materialism and self-serving behaviour had become the norm.

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The book focuses on two apparently irreconcilable sets of behavior - 'the ordinary and the extraordinary' - exhibited by the same people, both in the context of different spheres of social action, and of different political beliefs. Pieke concludes that the impression the Movement made on the people of Beijing has been much too profound to be erased.

The current regime stays in power because of its monopoly on military force, a lack of alternatives and the rapid economic growth since 1981 - but for how much longer?