ONGOING RESEARCH · SINCE 2024
Cultural Rhythms of Writing
THE QUESTION I AM WORKING ON NOW
What keeps a manuscript
readable?
I study the work that makes a written world available to its next reader.
A character’s history is one part of that story. Ownership, annotations and document forms bring its readers into view. I connect these encounters across Chinese, Zhuang and Vietnamese writing traditions, with Guangxi as a place of active interpretation.
Latest paper · Keeping relationships available · September 2026
2024 → 2026
How the question moved.
Open a point on the line to read that stage.
2024–2025 · Yuanpei Young Scholars Program
Different rhythms of persistence
Why do forms attested in Ming-era central China continue in Qing-era Zhuang manuscripts after becoming uncommon in later standardized writing?
I read these forms through the practices that keep them useful. Standardization and continuity have different tempos; ritual use and local readers are part of the history of writing.
WHAT THIS OPENED
Follow the graph beyond its shape: compare its meaning, pronunciation, date and use. How might historical changes in Chinese writing relate to local manuscript practices?
THE PUBLIC RECORD
The Cultural Rhythms of Variant Chinese Characters
2025 · Sociology Symposium · CNKI
From survival to local transformation
Do variant forms simply survive, or are they selected, reinterpreted and put to work in ritual and everyday textual practices?
My 2025 argument places meaning-making in Guangxi: communities absorb, select and remake written resources within their own language and ritual practices. Preservation leads into transformation, and transformation opens the regional comparison with Nôm.
ALREADY IN THE 2025 PAPER
“Zhuang regions are both recipients of Central Plains culture and producers of meaning.”
From the paper’s Chinese abstract; translated here into English. The sections on local adaptation and further circulation already frame Guangxi communities as active interpreters and raise connections with Nôm.
WHAT THIS OPENED
Test preservation, adaptation and wider circulation against specific textual examples, rather than explaining every variant through the same model.
THE PUBLIC RECORD
The Cultural Rhythms of Writing: Variant Characters in Qing-era Guangxi Zhuang Documents
Published paper & CNKI recordPrinted paper · 5 photographsMarch 2026 · Society for Applied Anthropology · Albuquerque
Guangxi as an active bridge
What can comparisons with Vietnamese Nôm reveal about the movement, adaptation and reading of graphs across textual traditions?
I bring Guangxi’s agency into a cross-border reading. Comparisons with Nôm put graph functions and readers’ interpretive choices alongside shape, and make Guangxi a bridge between textual worlds.
WHAT THIS OPENED
Compare functions as well as graphic resemblance. Investigate possible regional connections with Nôm using dated sources and manuscript-level evidence.
August → September 2026 · 3rd Global South Symposium · Ho Chi Minh City
Reading texts, keeping relationships available
What becomes visible when I read whole documents: their emotional worlds, annotations, ownership and the relationships their forms organize?
Graphs become part of lived textual worlds. The focus shifts toward how a manuscript remains useful to later readers, and how document models sustain obligations and connections.
WHAT THIS OPENED
The August presentation leads into the September paper: from emotional worlds to the custody and document relations that keep texts available.
THE PUBLIC RECORD
Emotional Worlds in Zhuang Border Manuscripts
November 2026 · American Anthropological Association · St. Louis
On the verge of legibility
Under what conditions can endangered textual worlds become readable across Chinese, Zhuang and Vietnamese frameworks?
The continuing inquiry brings together graph histories, local agency and encounters between readers. Center–periphery becomes a question about relations and reciprocal interpretation.
WHAT THIS OPENED
Develop this question in the accepted AAA presentation in November 2026. The abstract is available now.
LOOK WITH ME · THREE COMPARISONS
From a mark to a question.
Start with the photographed mark. Then compare its date, reading and work in the text. These are excerpts from my presentation and published paper.
What survives when the preferred form changes?
The red boxes identify the manuscript form. The comparison places Qing-era Zhuang handwriting beside earlier textual witnesses and Qing dictionary forms. I ask where a graph remains usable, and which practices keep it in use.
A related form can do different work.
The slide places handwritten forms alongside historical Chinese examples and a Nôm Tày dictionary entry. Its glosses move from “the same; grade” to “step; many” and a geometric use. The comparison makes function visible alongside shape.
Bring sound into the comparison.
My 2025 paper discusses 举 / 舉 alongside Vietnamese readings including cử, cữ and cỡ. Here the question widens: how do pronunciation, lexical meaning and textual setting change the work done by a related graph?
This is the printed paper’s example. The two image comparisons above are the examples in the current SfAA slides.
Read the published argument · CNKIHow to read these comparisons
Read the Chinese marks as the objects of study; the English captions explain their role. Ming and Qing dates identify historical periods, while some images are later reproductions. Similarity is a starting point: dating, pronunciation and use must be compared before inferring a historical connection.
WHERE THE QUESTION BEGAN
A written form can outlive
the standard that displaced it.
In Qing-era Zhuang manuscripts, I encountered forms used in Ming-era central China that later standardized writing used less. That uneven survival became my starting point. I follow what communities do with inherited forms: preserve them, give them new meanings, and read them across textual traditions.
“Zhuang regions are both recipients of Central Plains culture
and producers of meaning.”From the abstract of my 2025 Chinese paper
Sources, versions & open questions
The geographic animation traces the argument using approximate regional points. Dotted links are interpretive; a transmission history requires dated examples, graph functions and manuscript context. Natural Earth
Yuanpei: The ripple is a working analogy. A later occurrence does not by itself prove continuous transmission, a single point of origin, or an unchanged meaning.
CNKI: The 2025 paper proposes a regional interpretation through textual comparisons. An uninterrupted route from the Central Plains through Guangxi into northern Vietnam remains to be tested with dated manuscript evidence.
SfAA: Similar graphs or a successful Nôm-assisted reading do not establish a route or direction of transmission. These connections remain questions for further research.
GSS: The September revision identifies a common owner for the Lu Huangju manuscripts, not a demonstrated common copyist. The August materials are preserved as an earlier version.
AAA: Accepted and upcoming: this stage is a research agenda, not a completed presentation or a claim of new findings.
Earlier project account · Complete original
The research question
How do variant Chinese characters carry cultural rhythms across languages and communities? My Yuanpei Young Scholars project at Peking University examined the transmission of heterogeneous Chinese scripts in Zhuang communities during the late Qing dynasty.
Working across a corpus
From November 2024 to February 2025, I worked with a corpus of more than 300 pages from 20+ Zhuang ritual manuscripts, four Vietnamese Nôm volumes, and supporting dictionaries and gazetteers.
Outcome
The project produced a 39-page bilingual paper, graded A, and developed the framework “Cultural Rhythms of Writing.” Its title on the original website is “Cultural Rhythms in Variant Chinese Characters – A Study on the Transmission of Heterogeneous Chinese Scripts in Zhuang Communities during the Late Qing Dynasty.”
Continuing the conversation
I presented “Cultural Rhythms of Writing” at the Society for Applied Anthropology annual meeting in Albuquerque in March 2026, in the panel “Designing Ethnographic Encounters: Experiments and Interventions.”