Ancestral Leaves follows one family through six hundred years of Chinese history and brings to life the epic narrative of the nation, from the fourteenth century through the Cultural Revolution. The lives of the Ye family--"Ye" means "leaf" in Chinese--reveal the human side of the large-scale events that shaped modern China: the vast and destructive rebellions of the nineteenth century, the economic growth and social transformation of the republican era, the Japanese invasion during World War II, and the Cultural Revolution under the Chinese Communists. Joseph W. Esherick draws from rare manuscript, archival, and oral history sources to provide an uncommonly personal and intimate glimpse into Chinese family history. By situating the story of the Ye lineage within larger historical trends, Ancestral Leaves illuminates the changing patterns of everyday life as the family joined and was engulfed in the tumultuous experience of rebellion, war, and revolution.