Li Qunying, a Communist Chinese doctor of great dedication, lived through the Anti-Japanese War, the Civil War, the Korean War and the Cultural Revolution. Besides enduring personal loss, she also witnessed the suffering of the peasants whose sorrowful stories have rarely been told. This haunting memoir traces all of the major events of brutal 20th-century China, interweaving eyewitness history, folklore, superstition and Li Qunying's own first-hand accounts.