Book excerpt: In 1984 the authors travelled around China interviewing people to form a composite picture of the modern descendents of the Peking Man -- hence the original Chinese title of the collection, Peking Man (Beijingren). The interviews which were always intended to form a book, started to appear in 1984 as a regular column in the New York Chinese-language newspaper China daily news. At the beginning of 1985 the first 58 pieces were republished simultaneously in 5 different literary magazines in China. A round hundred of the pieces appeared in book form in China in August 1986.