Background

Song Hanxiao is a PhD student in the Comparative Asian Studies Programme at NUS. He is from Guangdong, China. His research focuses on Late Imperial China, Konbaung Burma, the Sino-Burmese frontier, Overseas and Overland Chinese in Burma, and the Portuguese Community in Burma. He earned his BA and MA in History from the University of Macau in 2022 and 2025, where he completed both theses, focusing on the beginning and end of Qing-Burmese relations. In 2021, he participated in a six-month exchange programme at East China Normal University in Shanghai. In 2023, right after the pandemic, he visited the University of Yangon, Department of History, for a one-year field work, funded by Macau Buddhism Foundation.

Asian Languages

Song Hanxiao is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Xiang Chinese, and Cantonese. He has learned elementary Portuguese and Japanese during his Bachelor's. He is learning Burmese now.

Research Interests

Song Hanxiao's research concerns the autonomous knowledge shared by both Burmese and Yunnanese in the long historical tradition, which connected tightly with mainland Southeast Asia over a millennium. Going beyond the bilateral Sino-Burmese relations, he brings the highland people into the coherent Sino-Burmese frontier interaction, in which the marginalized highland actually played an essential role. He is also interested in the Chinese and Portuguese communities in Burma from both land and sea, connecting Burma to a part of the global interaction in the early-modern period.