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The crimson rain of the title fell as a reddish precipitation (hongyu ) on a day in May 1928, in the uplands north of the Macheng County seat. Although not much was happening that month, the Nationalist magistrate was in the midst of mobilizing local forces to exterminate completely the communist peasant association after its disastrous attempt to set up an independent regional government. The red rain seems to have portended something bloody, but it is not noted as ever having fallen before May 1928, nor is it noted as ever having fallen again. No local comment about it is adduced. What, then, did it mean?
Macheng County lies some 175 miles northeast of Wuhan in Hubei Province; as the author states, it is one of eight counties in China with exceptionally violent histories. Another is Huang'an County, once a part of Macheng. The identities of the other six are not revealed.
Eleven chapters take us through this violent history, which begins in the mid-fourteenth century with local involvement in the Red Turban uprisings that precipitated the collapse of the Yuan dynasty. It...