ABSTRACT
In September, after the summer holiday, I began my visit to Henan. I had spent some months reading and reflecting, mainly on historical and theoretical aspects of field research. From the researcher’s point of view, there was an inexhaustible supply of empirical evidence. But facts often came enmeshed with interests, prejudices and taboos, and so the researcher received a distorted image of reality. The immensely difficult problem I had to resolve was: how to discern the truth which lay beneath the surface, how to arrive at some essential, universal knowledge through analysis of actual cases.
