The Seventies is a remarkable compendium of essays recollecting the decade that is now mostly thought of as an interregnum between a just preceding Maoist frenzy with its intense socialism, and the ascent of Deng Xiaoping and his new era at the very end of the period. The works selected and translated provide a series of vivid impressions of what has turned out to be a key period in modern Chinese social, intellectual and artistic life.