"The Flow of Gifts" is a monograph adapted by Yan Yunxiang based on his doctoral thesis. It mainly focuses on a very classic research issue in the field of anthropology, namely gift exchange. The author lived in a rural village in Heilongjiang Province for seven years and visited it twice to write this book. Through anthropological methods such as participant observation and in-depth description, we pay attention to the villagers' gift exchange in daily life and its cultural significance. While Yan Yunxiang updated the classic explanation theory of traditional anthropology on this issue, he also revealed the "non-institutionalization" characteristics of traditional Chinese society and discussed the social structure of rural society.
