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In order to conserve and maintain national and regional pride, the countryside heritage is of great importance, but without the knowledge of what that heritage consists of, or indeed what we have, it will be difficult to articulate priorities for policy. Thus, it is important to survey this in a way that explains the relationship of the social and material culture of the countryside. While over the past years in China, it has been fashionable to do this by means of Landscape Character Assessments, this is not particularly suitable in cases where a greater nuance is required in order to understand this delicate relationship between man and the land. Therefore, we have selected an older, more historically based method of investigating the countryside, by exploring patterns of field systems, both in surveys and historical plans and records, in a methodology famously defined by Hoskins in his The Making of the English Landscape, first published in 1955. This mixed-method of archival and on-site research provides a basis to create an understanding of how the land was first occupied and how this has evolved over time, i.e., how this landscape has been ‘made’. Such research is necessary for the whole of China.

My research interests are based on this survey research method, exploring the landscape changes of the Jianghan Plain from the perspective of historical landscapes, and interpreting the development of cultural landscapes in specific regions.