He Xi

Biography

I am interested in the history of village society at a time when villages are passing into history, as well as the history of common people as a creation of the modern age. In place of villages rooted in the locale, we now have people looking for their roots among villages. Let me be very clear about this: I am not saying villages have all but disappeared, or that in the past there weren’t common people. I am saying that when we put ourselves into a history that is expressed in the language and images of the state, and adapt to a daily life that we take for granted, we have lost the village as a place and replaced it with the longing for cultural roots. I like to approach history as the historical anthropologist might, by combining field work and historical documents. I like to read my documents where history happens to see what I can hear from the people who have not been recorded in them. I don’t know how far I can go in this venture. I shall go where history will take me.

Research Interest

Historical anthropology Chinese social and economic history from the Song dynasty to the Chinese Republic Public history