Andrew Kipnis's meticulously researched book From Village to City describes urbanization in Zouping, a small city in Shandong. It advances a new theory of urbanization that draws attention to how traditional patterns of everyday life have been recombined as part of the twenty-first-century Chinese city. Kipnis's departure point for this recombinant urbanization is that different theories of modernization do not explain the transformation of Zouping. His convincing solution draws on ideas from Chinese thought and Western sociology. Each chapter highlights those aspects of the past that shape contemporary Zouping, although the specific historical trajectory of recombination is traced more clearly in some parts than others.

Part one of the book describes the structural processes underlying urbanization in Zouping, covering the city's expansion, industrialization, consumer culture, and public spaces. The account of the political economy of the building of the Kaifa qu (development zone) and then the Xincheng (new city) is among the most detailed I have read. The resulting morphology resembles cities across China, but preserves the memory of physical features in street names, while fengshui influenced the siting of government headquarters. Chapter 3 focuses on the Weimian Group, the city's largest employer and the source of many of the author's interviewees. Primarily an aluminum and textile business, the firm has created a work-unit like environment that is reminiscent of Mao-era patterns of industrialization. The description of the increasingly diverse array of consumption choices available to people in Zouping says little about the city that distinguishes it from hundreds of others across China. This is also the least successful part of the book in tracing precisely what has been recombined, although Kipnis notes how consumption choices play a part in reinforcing traditional familial relations. In exploring the creation of the image of Zouping through advertising and the celebration of public festivals, chapter 5 makes the important point that nostalgic portraits of rural life are appropriated to add to the urban milieu. This highlights how urbanization involves utilizing the past from both the city and the countryside.

Part two provides case studies of five different categories of Zouping's inhabitants. Kipnis chooses to let the interviewees speak for themselves, and at times this is likely to leave the reader searching for the specific relationship between this evidence and his broader theoretical point. However, this rich detail brings Zouping and the book alive, and would also make excellent teaching material. Chapter 6 depicts the lives of factory workers from neighboring villages who have secure jobs in Weimian. Many families living in company apartments maintain domestic ties with members of the husband's family back in the village, and not the wife's, and so preserve Chinese traditions of marriage. This is in contrast to the nuclear families that many theorists see as the result of urbanization, which are more common among those who have moved to Zouping from far away, and form the subject of chapter 7. Many live in cramped conditions, sending money back home, and as migrants have done for centuries, they see their ability to chiku (eat bitterness) as a worthy sacrifice for a brighter future. Chapter 8 explores the fortunes of those villagers-in-the-city who have retained their land rights as Zouping expanded around them, and have prospered renting rooms to migrant workers. As with Weimian workers from villages close to Zouping, their social interactions remain centered on the husband's family, but their relatively relaxed jobs away from the factory give them time to take advantage of the opportunities the city provides for developing new social networks. Chapter 8 turns to the middle class, which Kipnis admits is rather amorphous. Much of this group's self-identity, apart from a physical separation from factory workers, who live in the older Kaifa qu as opposed to the newly built Xincheng, is through focusing on the education of their children. To be sure, there is a long tradition of this among aspiring gentry in imperial China, but a little more detail on how this practice has survived throughout the twentieth century would have been helpful. The final chapter focuses on another amorphous group, the youth of Zouping, who are primarily concerned with searching for an occupation and a marriage partner, aspirations that once more have a long history in China. Here though, Kipnis beautifully argues that the dreams of youth take advantage of the opportunities that they believe the city can offer, but warns that many will have to accept the life of a factory worker.

In conclusion, From Village to City is a refreshing change from the majority of studies of Chinese cities, which are still focused on large metropolises. Moreover, the theoretical insights are a valuable contribution to understanding how Chinese urbanization, unprecedented around the world in its scale and speed, incorporates and reworks historical tradition, rather than simply obliterating it.