People’s Letters is a digital archive that seeks to preserve and illuminate a remarkable yet understudied body of historical sources: the letters written by ordinary people to government agencies throughout the Mao era. These letters (including petitions, complaints, requests for assistance, personal appeals, and explanations of one’s situation) offer a rare window into the emotional worlds, lived experiences, and political imaginations of everyday people in the first three decades of the PRC. At the same time, the state’s responses and administrative records reveal how institutions interpreted and managed these voices from below. Together, these materials provide a textured, ground-level history of state–society relations under Mao, one articulated not only in policies and campaigns but in the intimate struggles and negotiations of daily life.
This project grew out of my longstanding interest in grassroots history in the Mao era and my commitment to preserving the everyday documents that illuminate ordinary people’s experiences. Through my research, I have come across a variety of grassroots materials that reveal how individuals navigated everyday life in the Mao era. People’s Letters draws on a small portion of these sources and places them in a carefully curated and ethically grounded digital environment. The aim is to offer researchers a structured, contextualized, and responsible way to engage with these documents, while safeguarding the privacy of the individuals whose voices appear in the archive.
In the next semester, I will build a pilot version of the archive using Omeka S, hosted through Reclaim Hosting under the project’s dedicated domain, renminlaixin.org (“people’s letters” in Chinese pinyin). The goal is not to create a fully public-facing collection, but rather to design a platform that balances accessibility for scholarly research with protection for the individuals whose personal stories appear in these documents. For this reason, the archive will incorporate credential-based login for selected materials. Public visitors will be able to view non-personal images from the pilot, while files or letters containing identifiable or personal details will only be accessible to approved researchers who agree to anonymization and ethical-use guidelines.
The pilot archive will host a small sample collection of digitized letters and related administrative documents. These materials will be drawn from my own collection as well as items shared by other historians who have granted permission for digitization and limited-access archiving. Each item will include metadata, contextual notes, and clear anonymization statements indicating what information has been redacted and why. To support responsible engagement, the site will feature a dedicated ethical-use page outlining appropriate ways to view, cite, and interpret the content, emphasizing the need to protect the individuals and communities represented in these materials.
From a technical perspective, Omeka S provides a straightforward and reliable foundation for building and maintaining a digital archive. The platform is designed so that additional features can be added over time without requiring advanced technical skills, and it also offers a range of free, beginner-friendly themes that allow someone like me, who is new to digital humanities and not a designer, to build a clean and functional site. Omeka S makes it easy to organize materials clearly and present them in flexible ways that will support future growth. Reclaim Hosting supplies the web server, security certificate, and domain management, ensuring that the site runs smoothly and remains secure and accessible as the project develops.
The pilot site will feature a clear and accessible design that guides researchers through the collection. The homepage will introduce the project’s goals and purpose, with a header menu linking to core sections of the archive, prominent buttons for browsing items and viewing the pilot collection, and a featured document that highlights the significance of the materials. Each item record page will display a thumbnail image that can be expanded for closer viewing, accompanied by Dublin Core metadata, contextual notes, and anonymization statements where relevant. The collection page will gather all sample letters and related documents in a single view alongside a brief explanation of the selection criteria and historical significance of the pilot set. Additional pages will include an “About” section outlining the project’s background, methods, and metadata practices, and an “Ethical Use Guidelines” page detailing expectations for responsible engagement and anonymization standards.
I have planned a timeline for the next fourteen fellowship weeks to build this project. I will begin by configuring the Omeka S site and drafting ethical guidelines, then select, scan, and organize a small group of sample materials. After preparing the documents, I will create metadata and upload all items to Omeka, building the main collection page and structuring the site. I will then write contextual introductions and captions. The final weeks will focus on testing, revising, and completing a project report that reflects on the pilot’s development and outlines next steps for expanding People’s Letters.
Beyond its technical and archival goals, People’s Letters aims to contribute to a broader scholarly conversation about grassroots historical sources, lived experience under socialism, and the methodological possibilities of digital humanities for modern Chinese history. By foregrounding individual voices of everyday life, the project opens pathways for new research grounded in social history, gender studies, political history, etc. At the same time, the project’s controlled-access design raises important questions about how historians can ethically share materials while still fostering collaborative scholarship.
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