Based on a close reading of a group of diary-like documents penned by a peasant and his family in late Qing Huizhou, central China, Professor Liu Yonghua will interpret three episodes drawn from the life of the peasant and illustrate how the family's life evolved during the sixty odd years from 1838, two years before the Opium war, to 1901, the year the Boxer Uprising was suppressed. He argues that the life of the family and its evolution were shaped and transformed by the interaction of a variety of different factors including calculations by the head of the family, local customs, government institutions, and international trade.