Introduction
IHP Research Fellow Hsi-mei Yang (courtesy name Zhengyao, 1916–1993) graduated from the Department of Biology at Wuhan University. Joining the IHP in 1943, he first worked as an assistant under Ting-liang Wu (1894–1969) and then as a Research Fellow in the Anthropology Division (now Anthropology Department), where he largely engaged in anthropometric research and oversaw the study of the skulls excavated from the Yinxu archaeological site. In 1944, Academia Sinica convened the Preparatory Office of the Institute of Physical Anthropology, with Yang being reassigned. The Preparatory Office, however, was absorbed by the IHP in 1947, during which he returned to the Anthropology Division to engage in ethnology and anthropology research, later expanding into fields such as pre-Qin history. Following his retirement from the IHP in 1980, Yang returned to Beijing to live and continued his academic career with a position at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The fonds of Hsi-mei Yang contains his personal collection of books and research materials, offprints, manuscripts, translated works, correspondences as well as reading and research notes. Among them, notable inclusions are theses and dissertations of supervised students at National Taiwan University, survey data on indigenous peoples in Taiwan, and data tables concerning his anthropometric research.
The fonds of Hsi-mei Yang contains his personal collection of books and research materials, offprints, manuscripts, translated works, correspondences as well as reading and research notes. Among them, notable inclusions are theses and dissertations of supervised students at National Taiwan University, survey data on indigenous peoples in Taiwan, and data tables concerning his anthropometric research.