I taught at CUHK from 1976 to 1989, went away, and returned in 2004. Over the years, I have taught courses in Chinese social and business history.

I think I am interested in social history. That means I am interested in custom, but I am not really interested in the history of customs. I am also interested in life style, but the social history I want to write is not the history of lifestyles. I guess I am interested in social structure, not the social structure created by historians, but the social structure which the people I am interested in identify with. I believe people can only surpass the limits imposed by the structure they identify with by understanding it. Yes, I think we read history to contribute to a better life.

• The history of the lineage in south China
• Chinese business history
• The history of Hong Kong
• Local history in China
• Chinese social and business history, historical anthropology

• Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China, Standford: Standford University Press 2007.
• China and Capitalism, A History of Business Enterprise in Modern China, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press 2006.
• “La solution lignagere: la revolution rituelle du xviesiecle et 1 tat imperial chinois,” Annales, Histoire, Sciences, Sociales 2006, 61:6, pp. 1291-1316.
• “The Yao Wars in the mid-Ming and their impact on Yao ethnicity,” in Pamela Kyle Crossley, Helen Siu and Donald Sutton, eds. Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity and Frontier in Early Modern China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, pp. 171-189.
• 人類學與中國近代社會史：影響與前景，東吳歷史學報，14, 2005, 頁 21-36.
• “The common people in Hong Kong history: their livelihood and aspirations unitl the 1930s,” in Lee Pui-tak, ed. Colonial Hong Kong and Modern China, Interaction and Reintegration, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005, pp. 9-37.
• “Between house and home, the family in south China,” in Ronald G. Knapp and Kai-yin Lo, eds. House Home and Family: Living and Being Chinese, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005.
• “The local official in commercial litigation in early nineteenth-century China,” University of Tokyo Journal of Law and Politics, 2004, vol. 1, pp. 144-155.
• 《告別華南研究》，華南研究會編：《學步與超越﹕華南研究論文集》﹐香港﹕文化創造出版社﹐2004﹐頁9-30。
• A Documentary History of Hong Kong, vols. 2 Society and 3 Economy, (volume 3 co-edited with Pui-tak Lee), Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1997 and 2004.
• Colonialism and the Hong Kong Mentality, Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 2003.
• “The original translocal society and its modern fate: historical and post-reform south China,” (with Helen Siu) Provincial China 8:1, 2003, pp. 40-59.
• 《祠堂與家廟: 從宋末到明中葉宗族禮儀的演變》，《歷史人類學學報》，1:2, 2003, 頁 1-20。
• “The Heaven and Earth Society in the nineteenth century: an interpretation,” in Kwang-ching Liu and Richard Shek, eds. Heterodoxy in Late Imperial China, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004, pp. 365-392.