Seed Grant Summer 2026 Report

Zou Yun

Background

People’s Letters is a digital archive dedicated to preserving and contextualizing the writings of ordinary Chinese people during the Mao era (1949-1976), particularly their correspondence with state institutions. Through petitions, complaints, requests, appeals, and private letters, the archive reveals how everyday citizens understood their world, navigated political authority, and articulated their frustrations, hopes, and aspirations. Complemented by government records documenting how officials processed and responded to these letters, the collection offers a rare, ground-level view of state-society relations during the early years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The project is grounded in the belief that grassroots voices are essential to historical understanding yet remain underrepresented in existing digital infrastructures for Chinese history, which largely privilege state records and elite narratives. By centering ordinary citizens as historical actors and providing carefully anonymized, ethically contextualized access to their writings, People’s Letters expands the evidentiary base for studying modern China.

Project Description

The archive also addresses a growing methodological and ethical challenge in the field. Over the past two decades, historians studying the PRC have increasingly relied on privately acquired grassroots materials, including letters, diaries, photographs, and discarded administrative records recovered through secondhand markets and informal circulation networks. While these sources have transformed scholarship on everyday life under socialism, they often remain inaccessible in private collections, limiting verification and research transparency. At the same time, unrestricted public access can expose sensitive personal information. People’s Letters responds to this dilemma by developing a digital archival model that balances accessibility, scholarly accountability, and the ethical protection of historical subjects.

People’s Letters is built using Omeka S, an open-source content management system widely used for digital archives and scholarly collections. Omeka S was selected for its ability to manage item-based collections and support structured metadata through the Dublin Core standard. Each document is digitized and uploaded as an individual item with associated metadata fields, including title, date, brief description, and subject tags.

A central feature of the project is its two-tiered architecture. The project incorporates a two-tiered access architecture as both a methodological and ethical intervention. A public-facing site hosts non-sensitive materials, including redacted letters and published government documents, and provides access to fully anonymized sources suitable for broad scholarly and pedagogical use. In addition, a restricted-access repository, People’s Letters Repository, will provide vetted academic researchers with access to a broader range of primary materials under clearly defined ethical use protocols. This repository will include documents containing sensitive personal narratives that are not appropriate for full public release. Together, these two components balance accessibility with the protection of individuals represented in the archive.

The core content of the archive consists of digitized primary sources related to people’s letters. These materials are drawn from the project lead’s research collection as well as items contributed by other historians, with their permission for digital archiving. Because many of these sources are privately held and not accessible through public archives, the project provides a means of sharing them in a controlled and ethically responsible manner. All materials are accompanied by clear ethical-use guidelines that specify conditions for access, citation, and responsible scholarly engagement.

People’s Letters archive is designed with a primary audience of scholars, students, and educators interested in the early PRC social history, while remaining accessible to a broader public. The interface prioritizes clarity, legibility, and ease of navigation, recognizing that users may approach the archive with varying levels of familiarity with both digital collections and the historical context.

Progress to Date

With support from the Seed Grant, I made substantial progress in developing the People’s Letters digital archive during the summer. I scanned, processed, and redacted an initial collection of twenty-five letters and related documents for publication on the project’s public website, establishing the foundation for a sustainable digital repository of grassroots historical sources. In addition, I revised and expanded the website’s About page and Community Guidelines, providing visitors with a clearer understanding of the archive’s mission, research significance, and ethical commitments regarding privacy, anonymization, and responsible use of historical materials.

Beyond content development, this phase of the project allowed me to refine the archival workflow for digitization, redaction, metadata creation, and online presentation. These procedures will facilitate the future expansion of the collection while ensuring that materials are made available in an ethically responsible and academically rigorous manner.

Future Directions

The next stage of the project will focus on both expanding the archive’s holdings and strengthening its digital infrastructure. First, I will continue digitizing, redacting, and publishing additional letters and related materials, with the goal of broadening the chronological, geographic, and thematic diversity of the collection. I also plan to collaborate with other scholars working on the history of the PRC who may be interested in contributing materials from their own collections, thereby transforming People’s Letters into a shared scholarly resource.

A major priority will be the development of the People’s Letters Repository, a controlled-access research portal designed for scholarly use. Using Omeka S and its Guest and Access modules, I will establish a credentialed user system that allows researchers to register, apply for access, and consult materials that cannot be fully released to the public because of privacy and ethical concerns. As part of this process, I will develop access policies and review criteria for credentialed users, creating a framework that balances scholarly transparency and source verification with the protection of sensitive personal information. Together, these initiatives will lay the groundwork for a scalable, ethically responsible digital archive that can serve the research community.