Ancestral home -- War and revolution -- Benefiting from the new marriage law -- Rushing into collective life -- The great leap forward -- "No time for meals all year round" -- Years of ordeal -- Reaching beyond peasant life -- Changes in the family -- Farewell to collective life -- Rural customs and urban life -- A house-purchasing frenzy -- Crossing borders and leaving the ancestral village -- Between the living and the dead -- All our children are "plump seeds" -- Return to ancestral land -- Glossary