"Looking back now, maybe my husband was interested in my understanding and practice of rural China. I didn't come from the 'ivory tower' to the 'ivory tower', I came from the 'countryside'."

6-year-old was admitted to university

He is a "legend" in the eyes of students

He is the student who has been with Mr. Fei Xiaotong for the longest time

He is also a teacher who has "knew and stayed with each other" for his whole life

Always stand at the forefront of sociological research

Closely integrate theory with today's reality

Just do scientific research that is truly useful to society

Open up a new era of Peking University cross-disciplinary exploration Gate

He is 2022 Winner of the Teaching Achievement Award at Peking University

Professor of the Department of Sociology at Peking University Qiu Zeqi

Let us listen to his story of "leading in", "sinking his heart" and "passing on" with sociology

I met my mentor after several academic transformations

"Looking back now, maybe my husband was interested in my understanding and practice of rural China. I did not come from the 'ivory tower' to the 'ivory tower', I came from the 'countryside'."

In the eyes of current students, Qiu Zeqi's academic career is "legendary". In his own words, he was pushed by the times. Despite this, he still feels that he is lucky after being "pushed away". Whether it is the entire learning experience or the seemingly "steep" turns between each learning experience, he can meet mentors who have an important impact on his knowledge and life.

Qiu Zeqi, who was born and grew up in the countryside, entered university at the age of 16, where he studied plant protection . After graduating from university, he obeyed the state's assignment and entered the state-owned Longganhu Farm in Hubei Province, where he worked in his own profession, preventing insects and treating diseases on crops. While working on the farm, Qiu Zeqi was encouraged to study for graduate school by a teacher from the Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, whom he met at work. He found the major of agricultural ancient books collection in the admissions brochure of the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. "I was able to make a career out of studying and had no other choice. I was very happy to take the exam and passed the exam."

Because the graduate school he studied in was in Nanjing, Qiu Zeqi spent his master's degree in Nanjing. "The institute was in the south, so I went to Nanjing Agricultural College, but there were no basic courses for me to study there. The Agricultural College negotiated with Nanjing University, I could go to the Chinese Department, History Department, and Archeology Department, so I became a day student at Nanjing University. I took basic courses in classical literature such as characters, phonology, exegesis, etc. " At that time, Qiu Zeqi's master's degree The tutor was Mr. Miao Qiyu, a well-known expert in compiling ancient agricultural books. Under his leadership, Qiu Zeqi wrote his master's degree thesis "An Interpretation of Lingnan Plant "Records" of Han, Wei and Six Dynasties" . This thesis was later kept by Qiu Zeqi.

After graduating with a master's degree, Qiu Zeqi, who originally wanted to become an expert in agricultural classical literature research like his mentor, was taken to Huazhong Agricultural University by a job assignment and became a teacher in the rural sociology major. From burying his head in the classics to looking at the society, Qiu Zeqi was a little unprepared. "There is still no chance to choose." Qiu Zeqi, who was on the podium for the first time, taught "Social Survey and Research Methods." In addition to studying in books, according to teaching requirements, students were also sent to the countryside to do surveys. "Compared with cities and rural areas in southern Jiangsu, the rural areas of Hubei were very difficult at that time, and the lives of farmers were very hard."This teaching and research experience allowed Qiu Zeqi to deepen his understanding of sociology, and also gave him insights into the bottom line and some details of the bottom line of Chinese society.

It was this experience that made him discover the value and significance of sociology, "Can I do something to change the suffering of farmers?" When he was not doing fieldwork, Qiu Zeqi spent time in the library of Huazhong Agricultural University, reading a large number of Chinese and English literature, including Mr. Fei Xiaotong's articles. Qiu Zeqi launched a search for Mr. Fei's works and also recorded a whole book of special notes on poverty and development. Without the Internet, he could not find a systematic sociology outline. He searched for books and documents in the order of introduction, theory, method, and topic according to his own understanding. In the process of "treasure hunting" everywhere, Qiu Zeqi came up with a new goal, studying with Mr. Fei Xiaotong.

In the autumn of 1992, Qiu Zeqi and Fei Xiaotong were on the way to research.

The god of luck once again favored Qiu Zeqi. In 1991, Mr. Fei Xiaotong, who had not recruited doctoral students for three years, recruited Qiu Zeqi and Ma Guoqing . In this way, Qiu Zeqi became the student who stayed with Mr. Fei Xiaotong for the longest time, and Mr. Fei also became the guide who influenced Qiu Zeqi as a teacher.

Sociological research must pay attention to the current society

“The Department of Sociology is to cultivate ‘people ’ Yes, a good teacher must put educating people first! I hope that my students can read two books, one is a "classic" book and the other is a "social" book. I try to provide them with the "key" to bring classic theory into practice. ”

As the student who has followed Mr. Fei Xiaotong for the longest time, Qiu Zeqi will follow Mr. Fei for several months every year to conduct social surveys during his studies. "Mr. Fei rarely directly teaches us what to do and what not to do, but if you string together what Mr. Fei asked us to do, there will be a clear direction." In the early 1990s, Fei Xiaotong took Qiu Zeqi to many places. He spent almost half of each year following Fei Xiaotong on field trips, traveling all over the country. Mentioning Mr. Fei Xiaotong, Qiu Zeqi recalled:

"Mr. Fei Xiaotong's greatest influence on me comes from two aspects. One is concern for society. Mr. Fei will devote his full enthusiasm to society to academic research; the other is methodological guidance. Mr. Fei instructed the students to understand reality in the context of history and to observe China in the context of the world. ”

Qiu Zeqi is talking about his understanding of sociology

In the 1990s, when the reform of state-owned enterprises was in full swing, the transformation of resource-based enterprises and the reform of state-owned enterprises intersected, and multiple problems were intertwined, becoming problems that troubled the government and enterprise reform, and also became an important area of concern for Mr. Fei Xiaotong. Qiu Zeqi’s doctoral thesis focused on Jinchuan Company and Baiyin Company in Gansu Province. Jinchang City, where Jinchuan Company is located, is a city built for large resource-based state-owned enterprises. Such island-type large state-owned enterprises are closely related to the development of the city. Without so much additional labor demand, where will the second-generation children of enterprises find employment? What is the relationship between collective enterprises built by state-owned enterprises in accordance with the policies at that time, and state-owned enterprises? What are the driving forces and restraint mechanisms for state-owned enterprises to establish collective economies? Qiu Zeqi's doctoral thesis focused on these real social issues. Caring for society and studying the transformation of China's economic and social development are Qiu Zeqi's original intention in conducting sociological research.

Sociological research must pay attention to the current society. This is a concept that Qiu Zeqi learned from Mr. Fei and tried his best to pass on. There is no contradiction between paying attention to society and reading classics. Qiu Zeqi believes that the characteristic of sociology is that you can either ignore things outside the window, or you can only listen to things outside the window. A good sociology teacher should combine the two when shaping students' personality and way of thinking.

In 2004, Qiu Zeqi was at the investigation site of the Sino-British AIDS prevention project in Deyang City, Sichuan Province.

Li Youjun, a 2019 doctoral student in the Department of Sociology, was Qiu Zeqi's student. In her eyes, Qiu Zeqi was a teacher whose "enthusiasm, vitality, curiosity, thirst for knowledge, and desire to explore are far beyond ordinary people." Li Youjun recalled every research experience Qiu Zeqi took with his students. She thought:

"Although Teacher Qiu has mastered a very rich knowledge of research Although he has no experience, he will still treat every communication with the interviewees very carefully and observe everything during the research period. "

Once, Qiu Zeqi took students to Menghe Village, Tongwei County, Gansu Province for research. The research subjects included not only company personnel, county and township cadres, but also older villagers and young people returning to their hometowns. The daily schedule was very full. Li Youjun described that at that time, "the brain was in a state of emptying out between interviews." Although there are many interviewees arranged and structured and patterned questions can save some time, Qiu Zeqi still guided the students to actively seize the opportunity to "go on" and cherish every detail of grassroots society.

"When chatting with the interviewees, Teacher Qiu seemed to be able to quickly observe and construct their real lives based on just a few sentences. He could not only empathize with the interviewees, but also rationally place them in the global social structure for investigation. " Li Youjun recalled. Encouraged by Qiu Zeqi's enthusiastic initiative and active exploration spirit, the students not only realized the care of society and the people in book knowledge, but also felt the significance and charm of field research.

In 2015, Qiu Zeqi took students to investigate in the Tibet Autonomous Region

When "general knowledge" reaches consensus

"Many times, there is no absolute right or wrong, only the best and the better. I hope students will be freed from the entanglement of right and wrong, and turn the search for the right answer into the search for the optimal solution facing reality."

As the winner of the Peking University Teaching Achievement Award, Qiu Zeqi has made great contributions to the promotion of general education at Peking University. As we all know, quantitative research is widely used in social science today. What happens when computing meets social science? In 2011, Qiu Zeqi began such an exploration.

In 2006, when he founded the China Social Survey Scientific Investigation Center at Peking University, Qiu Zeqi met Professor Li Xiaoming of the School of Information Science and Technology at the time. In 2011, Li Xiaoming discovered a textbook "Network Groups and Markets" () being used by Cornell University in the United States. He planned to introduce the content of this book as a course to Peking University, hoping to find an humanities and social sciences expert to co-teach this course. Li Xiaoming and Qiu Zeqi hit it off immediately, and "Computing + Social Sciences: Construction and Promotion of an Interdisciplinary Course" came into being.The course

, which was launched more than 10 years ago, has also become one of the pioneers in the exploration of interdisciplinary at Peking University. There were only 7 students in the first class in 2011, 11 in the second year, more than 30 in the third year, and later more than 100. Now the class size must be limited, and the class is full every year. Students found that this novel-sounding course combines rigorous and verifiable scientific methods with complex and uncertain social phenomena. This interdisciplinary and forward-looking attempt has greatly benefited the students. In 2017, this course won the first prize for Peking University’s teaching achievements and the first prize for Beijing’s higher education teaching achievements.

Qiu Zeqi in class

After this exploration, in 2017, Qiu Zeqi opened "Introduction to Social Science Methods" . This course became a "hot-selling" course as soon as it was launched. As the leader of the course, Qiu Zeqi teaches this course together with Teacher Li Xiaoming from the School of Information Science and Technology, Teacher Yan Jie from the School of Government, and Teacher Wang Hongzhe from the School of Journalism and Media. In recent years, there has been an obvious phenomenon in the classroom. Students have less and less in-depth discussions with teachers, but more and more ask, "Teacher, am I doing the right thing? Am I thinking right?" Qiu Zeqi believes that for social sciences, diversity of explanations and diversity of answers are common. offers this course to help students achieve a change in thinking from exam-oriented education to critical thinking to exploratory learning and research.

A major innovation of the course "Introduction to Social Science Methods" is that it does not use the traditional knowledge tree model to organize the course content, but uses the knowledge hive module method, which consists of four interrelated modules, namely experimental thinking, measurement thinking, inspection thinking and computational thinking , but have different knowledge foundations. Among them, experimental thinking discusses the underlying method logic of the entire science, measurement thinking discusses the data logic of humanities and social sciences, testing thinking discusses the argumentation logic of humanities and social sciences, and computational thinking discusses the computational logic of humanities and social sciences.

is both data, experiment and logic. Will it be intimidating to liberal arts students? Qiu Zeqi smiled and replied: "No!" He said that in this course, students only need the scientific knowledge of junior high and high school. He started this course in the hope that students will understand that scientific research is not that difficult in fact. What is difficult is valuable imagination and creativity. Qiu Zeqi hopes that students who have taken this course, even if they do not do research in the future, can treat the world, the things around them, and themselves more rationally than the average person.

In 2014, Qiu Zeqi led a team to Jinja Hospital in Uganda to investigate China's medical and health assistance to Uganda

The general nature of the course "Introduction to Social Science Methods" and the diversified subject backgrounds of the teachers quickly attracted students from various departments of social sciences to study.

"When you use a pair of eyes armed with experimental methods or causal inference to observe the complex and ever-changing world, you will be able to discover many seemingly causal relationships' 5’ There may actually be fallacies or biases behind things about . This methodological guidance will enable me to better use my rationality. "

Si Chunyi, a 2021 undergraduate majoring in politics, economics and philosophy at Yuanpei College, said that the course "Introduction to Social Science Methods" not only imparted general knowledge, but also inspired him in academic methods.

continue to innovate in the company of each other