Blood Road is a complex mix of social history, literary analysis, political biography, and murder mystery. It explores and analyzes the social and cultural dynamics of the Chinese revolution of the 1920s by focusing on the mysterious 1928 assassination of Shen Dingyi—revolutionary, landlord, politician, poet, journalist, educator, feminist, and early member of both the Communist and Nationalist parties.

The search for Shen's killer details the contours of revolutionary change in different spatial contexts—metropolitan Shanghai, the provincial capital Hangzhou, and Shen's home village of Yaqian. Several interrelated themes emerge in this dramatic story of revolution: the nature of social identity, the role of social networks, the political import of place, and the centrality of process in historical explanation. It contributes significantly to a new understanding of Chinese revolutionary culture and the 1920s revolution in particular. But Blood Road remains at base a story of people linked in various relationships who were thrust, often without choice, into treacherous revolutionary currents that shaped, twisted, and destroyed their lives.

R. Keith Schoppa is Professor of History and Chair of both the Department of History and the East Asian Studies Program at Valparaiso University. He is the author of Chinese Elites and Political Change (1982) and Xiang Lake:Nine Centuries of Chinese Life (1989).

“[This work] questions the once-dominant structural explanations of the origins of Chinese communism [and] sets a new standard for histories of the Chinese revolution. This beautifully written book chronicles the life and death of one of the more enigmatic figures of revolutionary China, the activist Shen Dingyi. In telling the story in a most unlikely form—that of a murder mystery—Schoppa shows us just how uncertain and contingent the course of the Chinese revolution really was.”—Elizabeth J. Perry, Lingua Franca

"The mystery at the heart of Keith Schoppa's . . . book is the grisly slaying of the prominent revolutionary Nationalist, Shen Dingyi. . . . Schoppa is one of the most imaginative historians writing on modern China today. In Blood Road he tries something never before attempted in a work of modern Chinese history: to write a book that invites a reader to start at the back. . . . The invitation [is] compelling."—John Fitzgerald, China & Information

"An exceptional book that defies easy categorization. . . . It combines an engaging narrative with a theoretical analysis that makes it an essential book for anyone interested in the history of revolution in China. It is especially noteworthy because, in addition to the thorough utilization of rich historical sources that one has come to expect from Schoppa, it makes full use of Shen's literary works to illuminate his mentality and actions."—Edward A. McCord, China Quarterly

“The life and death of an individual participant in the revolution, viewed in the context of a network of social relationships, becomes an effective vehicle for studying larger historic processes. . . . Schoppa concentrates on the details of history and convincingly shows us its infinite possibilities and contingencies. For him, the countless small choices made by millions of people in their daily lives are what shape the ultimate course of history.”—Peter Seybolt, Journal of Asian Studies

“How much of human action is based on the personality and how much is predicated on the controllable flow of events. . . . In his nuanced and original work, Schoppa brings a wealth of research and insights to illuminate this persistent intellectual dilemma.”—Marilyn A. Levine, American Historical Review

Winner, Joseph Levenson Prize, the China and Inner Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies