Dragons in Diamond Village: Tales of Resistance from Urbanizing China

“David Bandurski is a modern-day Marco Polo taking us into the heart of new China.” —Kevin Sites, author of In the Hot Zone

China’s explosive modernization has led to a unique phenomenon: voraciously-growing cities absorbing formerly distant villages that become tenement communities.

Dragons in Diamond Village is about the plight—and the courage—of the village-dwellers caught in this tide of urbanization: Huang Minpeng, a semi-literate farmer turned self-taught rights defender; He Jieling, a suburban housewife who just wanted to open a hair salon; and villagers like Lu Zhaohui who refuse to give up the land their families have cultivated for generations.

It is, in short, a stirring tale -- a community of unlikely activists, they are fighting for identity, justice, and their rightful place in China’s new cities. Behind them stand millions of others who exist in the strange limbo of the urban village. Because their villages stand on invaluable tracts of land—vulnerable to the machinations of corrupt local officials—their homes have become a battleground in the war over China's urban future.