Sold People discusses human trafficking in late Qing and early Republican North China.Defining trafficking broadly as "buying and selling,as well as brokering and transportation with intent to sell" (p.3),this book examines not only the sale of commoner women and children into slavery and prostitution but also coercive bride-price marriage and adoption.Ransmeier insightfully observes that,"Chinese families were transactional families.With the exception of childbirth,arrivals and departures from a household involved the exchange of money (or goods) and mediation by an intermediary or broker" (p.2).A person had a price and in certain circumstances his/her domestic and reproductive labor could be transferred into another family through sale.