top of page

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON · SEATTLE

Boge Xiao

she/her

Anthropology, language
& manuscript cultures.

I’m an anthropology undergraduate in the Interdisciplinary Honors Program at the University of Washington. I connect language fieldwork in Southwest China with the study of Zhuang manuscripts and Southeast Asian writing traditions.

My Gelao and Zhuang heritage is where these questions began.

New bilingual commentary for 77 manuscript records; an expanded photographic study of my embroidered album.

Chicken-bone divination, viewed through a movable model and the manuscripts in my collection.

A manuscript page used in my SfAA presentation, with handwritten characters, blue notes and red circles around selected forms

Reading in practice · SfAA 2026

ONGOING RESEARCH · SINCE 2024

Cultural Rhythms of Writing

What keeps a manuscript readable? I follow inherited character forms into local use, cross-border interpretation and the relationships a text carries.

Yuanpei → CNKI proceedings → SfAA → GSS → AAA

Latest paper: Keeping relationships available · September 2026

Next presentation: On the Verge of Legibility · AAA, November 2026 · Accepted

FIND YOUR WAY IN

A pair of phoenix-like birds with multicoloured looped plumage; a pencilled caption below reads “Remarkable Birds”.

Embroidered silk album
A complete page with two phoenix-like birds

An open manuscript spread on yellowed paper, covered in vertical columns of handwritten characters with small red marks among the black ink.

Huayulou manuscripts
Handwritten text from the Huayulou archive

Photographs from my collection and archive · Select an object to explore

IN THE COLLECTION · UPDATED OCTOBER 2026

Look at the
material evidence.

Thread makes the picture; handwriting gives the object another life. In this embroidered album, I read costume figures, stitching and handwritten inscriptions together.

In the Huayulou collection, open a digitized volume and follow it into my bilingual analysis. Begin with the page itself.

bottom of page