I am interested in the history of village society at a time when villages are passing into history, and 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 I like to approach history as the historical anthropologist might, by combining field work and historical documents.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 it. I don’t know how far I can go in this venture. I shall go where history will take me.

• Chinese Social and Economic History
• Historical Anthropology
• Regional History
• Ritual and Institution
• The Common People in Modern China

• Qing History
• Historiography (Advanced)
• Historical Anthropology of Chinese Society
• The Common People of Modern China
• Chinese Commerce and Society, 1368-2000
• Between the State and Local Society: the History of the Pearl River Delta in the Ming and Qing

Book Authored

• Lineage and Community in China, 1100-1500: Genealogical Innovation in Jiangxi, London: Routledge, 2020.
• 雷民雷神 (The thunder god and his people), Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe Lingnan meishu chubanshe, 2013.
• 亦神亦祖：粵西南信仰建構的社會史 (Ancestor and deity: a social history of the construction of local religion in southwestern Guangdong), Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2011.

Books Edited

• The Fisher Folk of Late Imperial and Modern China: An Historical Anthropology of Boat-and-Shed Living, Xi He & David Faure eds., London: Routledge, 2016.

Journal Papers

• 從黎人到黎族：海南五指山民族志的再認識 (From the Li people to the Li ethnicity: A reflection of the Ethnography in the Five-Finger Mountain of Hainan), Beijing daxue xuebao (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) 北京大學學報 (哲學社會科學版), Vol. 5, 2018, pp. 150-160.
• 從鄉野到廟堂—— 略論傳統鄉村景觀的演變 (From the village views to the memorial temples: a brief discussion on changes in the village landscape), Jiangxi shifan daxue xuebao (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) 江西師範大學學報 (哲學社會科學版), 47: 4, 2014, pp. 107-113. (Reprinted in Wen Chunlai & Huang Guoxin eds.歷史學田野實踐教學的理論、方法與案例 Theory method and cases in historical anthropology teaching, Guilin: Guangxi Shifan daxue Chubanshe, June 2017, pp. 104-125.)
• “The last of the Li: ritual texts and shifting ethnicities in Hainan,” Asian Ethnicity (London: Routledge), 18:2, 2017, pp. 236-249.
• “The secret society’s secret: the invoked reality of the Tiandihui,” Frontiers of History in China (Beijing: Higher Education Press and Leiden: Brill),11:4, 2016, pp 510-531. (With David Faure, second author).
• 〈歐陽氏譜圖〉的流變與地方宗族的實體化 (The Ouyang genealogical diagram and the making of local lineage), Xin shixue 新史學(臺北), 27:4, 2016, pp.1-56.
• 祭祀空間與地域社會:雷州雷祖祠及其周邊鄉村的靈物、神廟與祠堂 (Ritual space and the local society: focus on spirits, temples and ancestral halls around the Leizu temple and the villages nearby) , Lishi renlei xue xuekan 歷史人類學學刊, 12:1, 2014, pp.73-110. (Reprinted in John Lagerwey & David Faure eds.中國鄉村與墟鎮神聖空間的建構Constructed Space in Chinese Villages and Market Towns: The Roles of the Sacred, Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe, Novermber 2014, pp. 188-230.)
• 流動的神明：硇洲島的祭祀與地方社會 (The gods who migrate: the rituals and local society on Naozhou Island, Li Qingxin ed. Haiyang shi yanjiu 海洋史研究, 47:4, 2014, Beijing: Shehui wenxian chubanshe, pp.232-254.
• 明末至清中期湘東南礦區的秩序與採礦者的身份 (Social order and the status of miners in the mines of southeastern Hunan during the mid-Qing), Zhongguo shehui jingji shi yanjiu中國社會經濟史研究, 2, 2012, pp.19-29.
• 從家屋到宗族——廣東西南地區上岸水上人的社會 (From house to lineage: the social organization of boat people who have moved ashore in southwestern Guangdong), Minsu yanjiu 民俗研究, 2010:2, pp. 224-247.
• 乾隆時期礦政中的尋租角逐：以湘東南為例 (Rent-seeking in mining management during the Qianlong era: a study of examples from southeastern Hunan), Qingshi yanjiu 清史研究, 2010, pp.56-64.
• 亦神亦祖——廣東雷州所見正統化下的禮儀重迭 (Ancestor and deity: the superscription of rituals in the process of legitimization in Leizhou, Guangdong) Xin shixue 新史學（臺北）, 20:4, 2009, pp.115-168.
• 土酋歸附的傳說與華南宗族社會的創造——以高州冼夫人信仰為中心的研究 (The submission of local chiefs and the construction of lineage society in southwestern China: an analysis of beliefs in Lady Xian of Gaozhou), Lishi renlei xue xuekan 歷史人類學學刊, 6:1 and 2, 2008, pp.23-66.
• 編戶齊民與身份認同——明前期海南里甲制度的推行與地方社會之轉變 (Registration of residents and sense of identity: the introduction of the lijia system in Hainan and the transformation of local society in the early Ming dynasty),”Zhongguo shehui kexue 中國社會科學, 6, 2006, pp.184-198.

Book Chapters

• “A millennium in the history of the lineage (zongzu and jiazu) in China as seen in Jiangxi and Guangdong,” in Han Min, Kawai Hironao and Wong Heung Wah eds. Family, Ethnicity and State in Chinese Culture Under the Impact of Globalization, California: Bridge 21, 2019, pp. 43-62. (first author, with David Faure) (Reprinted as 中國の宗族と家族千年史――江西省と広東省の事例から, in Han Min ed. 家族・民族・國家: 東アジアの人類學的アプローチ, 2019, Tokyo: 風響社, pp. 49-68.)
• “Boat living in land-based society,” in Xi He & David Faure eds., The Fisher Folk of Late Imperial and Modern China: An Historical Anthropology of Boat-and-Shed Living, London: Routledge, 2016,pp.1-30. (With David Faure, first author).
• “Gods adrift: religious ritual and local society on Naozhou island,” in Xi He & David Faure eds., The Fisher Folk of Late Imperial and Modern China: An Historical Anthropology of Boat-and-Shed Living, London: Routledge, 2016, pp.83-100.
• “Mechanization, market and moving ashore,” in Xi He & David Faure eds., The Fisher Folk of Late Imperial and Modern China: An Historical Anthropology of Boat-and-Shed Living, London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 186-198. (With David Faure, first author).
• “The past tells it differently: the myth of native subjugation in the creation of lineage society in south China,” in David Faure and Ho Ts’ui-p’ing, eds. From Chieftains to Ancestors: Incorporating Indigenous Society in Southwestern China, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013, pp.138-170.

Encyclopedia Entry

• “Hainan” in David Pong ed., Encyclopaedia of Modern China, Detroit, MI: Charles Scribner’s Sons, Volume: 4, 2009, pp 167-169.

Book Reviews

• Book review: Sun Jiang ed., 事件記憶•敘述 (Events, memories, and narratives), Lishi renlei xue xuekan 歷史人類學學刊, 2:2, 2004, pp.171-174.
• Book review: Xiao Tian, 在神聖與凡俗之間 (Between sacredness and secularity), Lishi renlei xue xuekan 歷史人類學學刊, 1:2, 2003, pp.148-151.

Others

• 海南考察散記 (Field notes on Hainan island), Huanan yanjiu ziliao zhongxin tongxun田野與文獻：華南研究資料中心通訊, 31, 2003, pp. 22-25
• 2001年華南研究年會綜述 (Report on the Annual Conference of Sourth China Research), Huanan yanjiu ziliao zhongxin tongxun華南研究資料中心通訊, 26, 2002, pp25-27.

• Research Fellow, CUHK-SYSU Centre for Historical Anthropology, 2012-2020
• Research Fellow, Center for Local History and Memory, East China Normal University, since 2017
• Adjunct Professor, the Institute of Cultural Heritage, Shandong University, 2015-2019
• The Faculty of Arts Outstanding Teaching Award 2014
• The Faculty of Arts Outstanding Teaching Award 2013
• CUHK History Department Teaching Award 2013
• 3rd National Young Historian’s award, second grade, July 2002