HE Xi
Associate Professor
  • B.A., M.A. (Sun Yat-sen University); Ph.D. (CUHK)
  • Director, MA Programme in Comparative and Public History
  • Director, CUHK-SYSU Centre for Historical Anthropology, CUHK
Tel
(852) 3943 1529
Address
Room 124, 1/F, Fung King Hey Building, CUHK, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong

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 I like to approach history as the historical anthropologist might, by combining field work and historical documents.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.

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Awards and Honors