Shi Tianjian (1952-2010)

I am in shock about the news that Shi Tianjian has passed away. TJ was a wonderful person to have around and a hero in my field, a pioneer in bringing survey research to the study of contemporary China.

We will all miss him enormously. Not unlike Leslie Kish (another of my survey research heroes), Shi Tianjian's amazing life experience made him an exceptional social scientist. As a teenager, he was asked to clean the village jiapu （家谱） in Henan during the cultural revolution, performed over 200 appendix surgeries in the local county hospital (fulfilling in a way his childhood dream of becoming a doctor)--a dream that the Mao regime denied him because of his social origins, drove trucks around China in the early 70s before passing the university entrance examination than finally gave him the chance to study at Peking University. At Columbia in New York, he put his trucking skills to use by driving a cab several nights a week in order to help him make ends meet during his graduate studies.

I met TJ in the 1990s, and was privileged to work with him on the China Survey in 2008. I will miss our spirited discussions about sampling, and will always cherish the memories of traveling with him in Tianjin (his 老家）and Sichuan a few years back. Farewell TJ, your friends miss you already!