Abstract: In 1935, the young Fei Xiaotong (1910–2005), accompanied by his newlywed wife Wang Tonghui, went to Dayaoshan, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southwest China on an investigative journey. After the tragic death of his wife, he had to return to his hometown in Wujiang, Jiangsu Province. “With a broken heart never to heal,” grief-stricken Fei stayed home, trying to live his illness out. At the suggestion of his sister, he distracted himself by doing some research in Kai Xiangu Village, a brief inquiry that would later mark the genesis of his milestone work in world anthropology titled Peasant Life in China. This scholarly contribution bestowed upon the village the designation “Jiangcun,” a name to resonate in global academic circles. Over the span of seventy years till his passing, Fei revisited the village a number of times and wrote more than one hundred poems of varying length about rural development in China. Covering the long history and focusing on Kai Xiangu Village and “lives of Chinese farmers”, this study, anchored in Fei Xiaotong's rural research ideologies spanning different historical epochs, scrutinizes his poetic expressions to enhance our understanding of his journey in rural research.

Key words: Fei Xiaotong, poem, rural care