Years of Red Dust is a collection of short stories by Qiu Xiaolong.

[2] It is a story about China between 1949 and 2005, told through changes experienced by people living in the Red Dust neighbourhood in Shanghai.

[3] Each chapter tells a story from a different year, consisting of two strands, slice-of-life personal histories of ordinary people living in Red Dust Lane, mixed with the ever-changing narrative of China's socialist history.

[5] Incidents involve neighbors who are academics, those who own businesses, those who join the military, as well as manual laborers.

One chapter includes a fictionalized account, based on a real life event, of preparations for the day U.S. President Richard Nixon visited Shanghai.