Abstract:

Starting from the cross-cultural stance of being “a child of all nations” without rejecting human experiences and social thought beyond the Chinese intellectual world, this paper takes the indigenous concepts xiu/xiuxing (self-cultivation/cultivation practice) as an analytic lever to outline a practice-centered pathway for Chinese anthropology. In this pathway, Chinese concepts are neither the endpoint of theory nor mere cultural markers; rather, they function as provisional bridges linking experience and theory, the local and the universal. What the concepts xiu/xiuxing disclose is not an “essentially Eastern” spirit, but a shared human condition of shaping the self through practice over time. Its value lies in the processual practice of “wiping/cleansing, ordering/rectifying, regulating/attuning, and disciplined exercise”, through which the relations among subject formation, bodily techniques, ethical training, and forms of life are reconnected, thereby bringing human becoming into an analytic field that can be tested and compared. From this vantage point, what Chinese anthropology seeks is not to replace Western concepts with Chinese ones, but to explore, through close engagement with indigenous concepts and sustained methodological reflection, a theoretical pathway capable of moving back and forth across cultural experiences, entering into dialogue, and continuously generating new understandings.

Key words: Chinese anthropology, a child of all nations, xiu/xiuxing, mind–body practice