Yet in the images it gives us, of the poor village huts in the countryside, the shifting population of the small town with its guest house in the market, the pattern of rural smallholders, convicts and bonded servants, vividly evoke the local world of the Qin. Set against the wider background of war and disruption, in the period of the Qin conquests, we learn of the enslavement of captive populations, the movement of bonded labourers to different estates, and we hear for the first time the voices of the lower ranks of Chinese society.
