BEIJING: It’s no exaggeration to call Rachel Murphy a China expert. The professor at the University of Oxford has long been committed to development research and China issues, exploring China’s urbanization, educational development, demographic transition and national policies as well as the social and cultural changes they have caused.
In the past 30 years, Murphy has visited China’s rural areas many times. Her recent long stay in the country entailed a three-year field survey in counties of Jiangxi and Anhui provinces between 2010 and 2013, followed by some short visits in the next two years, based on which came the British scholar’s most recent book, The Children of China’s Great Migration, published in 2020.
While she’s used to seeing rapid changes in China over the past three decades, culture shock remains for the professor, who shared her thoughts on a recent return to a Chinese village ahead of the World Conference on China Studies — Shanghai Forum, in which she participated as a keynote speaker on Friday.
The countryside was very different, she said. Yet she was most impressed by the local grannies in their 60s or even 70s embracing short-video apps as a new hobby and social skill. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
