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3 - From the Local to National, the Personal to Civilizational

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2025

Linda Qian
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

This chapter focuses on the county level of analysis. Drawing from fieldwork conducted in the county seat, it studies the Jinyun County’s response to the 19th Party Congress and state’s further elaboration upon the Rural Revitalization Strategy. It highlights how a ’xiangchou plan’, concocted in summer 2018, culminated in a five-year developmental strategy: ’Jinyun’s Xiangchou Industries to Enrich the People’. Interviews highlight the county’s ambitions to coin the term “Xiangchou Industries” and to make it a national model for revitalization, replicable and adaptable by small towns and villages nationwide. The usage of xiangchou as the means and model for rural revival highlights the potency of feelings such as ‘homesickness’ embedded in xiangchou, and it reminds us how the countryside is central to the imagining of this ‘hometown.’ This Chapter also discusses the application of the ’hometown ethnography’ as method and explores the ’hometown’ as a topic for ethnographic study.

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