My great-grandfather wasn’t a wealthy man, but he was relatively well-to-do by the standard of his time. He lived in a small village on the east coast of China where everyone was related to everyone else. In an old photo, he looked handsome and scholarly. He hoped one day to become a government official. Unfortunately, the imperial court ceased to exist when rebels forced the last Qing emperor to abdicate in 1912. With no court to serve, he became a wheat farmer.

After the Communist Party took over in 1949, it pushed for “land...