Xia Peigen 夏培根

Education:
B.A., Department of Chinese Literature, Shih Hsin University
M.A., Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore

Research Interest:
History of late imperial China, history of modern China, history of Chinese overseas

Self-Introduction:
Beginning in southern Zhejiang, I examine global interconnections and reinterpret the region within a global context. Centering on Samkiang (三江) migrant networks, my work traces twentieth-century transregional linkages across China, Southeast Asia, and Europe.

Supervisor: Dr Chan Ying-kit, A/P Koh Khee Heong

Thesis Advisor: Beyond Southern Zhejiang: Temporal Lineages and Synchronic Networks of “Ou” Symbols

Thesis Research Area:
Rooted in the Ou-ling River Basin encompassed by present-day southern Zhejiang, my dissertation examines how “Ou” (甌) - a geographic and cultural symbol that today stands for the city of Wenzhou - circulates on both diachronic and synchronic planes through interactions among diverse community networks. I trace its formative footprints before the very notion of “southern Zhejiang” emerged - across local gazetteers, maps, temple inscriptions, landscape toponyms, and festivals - and I also consider extra-basin historical forces that intervened in its internal circulation. The symbol is not fixed; it moves between official histories and everyday life, between villages and urban marketplaces. Each reinscription confers new meanings - homeland, nation, even brand. This dissertation presents the longue-durée lineages and dynamic networks of the Ou symbol. In short, this local case poses a larger question: as populations, politics, and economies change, how do symbols carry and remake a sense of place?