In a country as centralized as any in the world with a longer history of centralization than any other, understanding Beijing, the center of the center, can go a long way to understanding the country.
But in everything I've read, Anhui comes up again and again. The Good Earth, the first post-college book I read on China, was based there; the Great Leap Forward famine was perhaps more severe there than in any other province of China; the oppression of the peasants at least as brutal as anywhere else; the April 2 incident and others like it happened there.
The Center has always feared rebellion among the peasants. A significant part of the soul of China is there in Anhui.
Above, Brickworker slaves, Anhui province (2007).
