Kaixiangong village in Wujiang district, Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu province, known worldwide by its literary name, Jiangcun, is seeking memories of the landmark book that put the village on the global academic map.
In the summer of 1936, 26-year-old scholar Fei Xiaotong (Hsiao-Tung Fei) lived with local farming families and documented farming, silkworm breeding and silk reeling, trade and everyday village life.
His research provided the basis for his doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics in 1938 and was published in Britain in 1939 as Peasant Life in China: A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley. His mentor, renowned anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, hailed it as a landmark in anthropological fieldwork and theory.
The book has since been translated into numerous languages, taught at universities around the world and held in libraries across continents. Fei returned to Jiangcun 26 times between 1936 and 2002, documenting the village's transformation over nearly seven decades.
To mark the 90th anniversary of the field study, a global call has been launched, running from Sept 21 through the end of the year, to uncover the memories of the book preserved around the world.
Anyone with an edition of the book — from the original printing and translations to rare library copies or scholarly excerpts — is invited to submit photos or videos of their copy, including its cover, title page, stamps and annotations.
The call also seeks broader memories of Jiangcun, including information on overseas scholars and students connected with the book or Fei, archival materials, oral histories, and records of international exchanges, from press coverage and documentaries to conference and university materials.
Selected materials will be featured in a documentary and academic screenings marking the anniversary. They will also be catalogued and archived, with selected items deposited at the Fei Xiaotong Jiangcun Memorial Hall as part of the Jiangcun Global Memory Archive.
"Over the past ninety years since the book was published, the world has come to better know China," the organizers said, inviting people around the world to revisit the village that Fei wrote about.
