Notes from the Field | Aidan Huang, “It took me one and a half years to enter the field”: A field note on the gaps of China’s area studies
Power went out again in N’Djamena. The low hum of the air conditioner vanished, leaving only the faint scrape of windblown dust against the window frame. Before that brief silence could let me catch my breath, the generator roared back to life. Its vibration traveled through the walls and floor into the legs of my chair, and the whole house seemed to tremble with it. My throat tightened. A single cough felt enough to stir the dust of the city back into the air. After seven months of fieldwork in Chad, I had almost adapted to the harshness of daily life as a Chinese doctoral researcher. Then a sudden sense of absurdity struck me: how had I really ended up here?
Figure 1. A view of the Chari River in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad
At that moment, my memory lurched back to another afternoon in 2022. I was still in Beijing then, having just pushed my life to a crossroads. At the time, institutional support for doctoral students’ overseas fieldwork in China’s area studies had only just begun to take shape. My doctoral project, funded by a Chinese university, identified three possible destinations for two years of fieldwork: Chad, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic. The choice reflected a broader moment in China’s area studies. As the field expanded rapidly, universities and research institutes were increasingly encouraged to cultivate expertise beyond the usual centers of academic attention, often in the language of strategy, interdisciplinarity, and first-hand knowledge. The ambition was visible. Yet when I later asked around at my own institute, few people could clearly explain why these three countries had been selected, beyond a vague sense that Chinese scholarship had done little sustained work in that part of central Africa and that the map of area studies still seemed open to expansion.
As a young researcher eager for long-term fieldwork in Africa, I accepted the challenge almost as readily as it was offered. I chose Chad primarily for reasons of personal safety. Even so, I could not deceive myself. Repeated searches through publicly available materials yielded no example of Chinese scholars conducting sustained social science research in Chad. What they provided instead was an unsettling outline of the country: one of the poorest in the world, described as “the dead heart of Africa,” plagued by cuts to water, electricity, and internet, with extremely weak infrastructure, high security risks, and terrorist activity in border regions. Once those labels were layered onto my own position as a woman, a Chinese national, and a doctoral student, the choice began to look almost impossible. Yet the Central African Republic remained under the shadow of civil war, and the capital of South Sudan was repeatedly thrown into political instability. Chad, by contrast, appeared more stable, without an ongoing civil war or active conflict.
It took me one and a half years to enter the field, far longer than colleagues assigned to better-resourced field sites in other Global South countries, who typically entered the field within half a year. What I encountered was how thin that route could be in practice: little accumulated guidance, few inherited networks, and almost no usable knowledge I could draw on from within my own academic environment, even though field entry depended on exactly such forms of support. Like everyone else in my institute, I had to establish contact on my own: write to scholars, institutions, and anyone who might help me understand how entry could become possible. This essay, therefore, is not simply a record of how I reached Chad. It is an account of what that route revealed about China’s area studies at a particular moment of expansion. Chad matters here not because it is uniquely difficult, but because its difficulty made unusually visible the distance between formal designation and practical access.
Searching for Access through a Thin Academic Presence
As soon as the first semester of doctoral training ended at the beginning of 2024, I began scrambling for a long-term academic invitation letter. That sheet of paper would determine not only my travel arrangements, but whether I could begin in Chad from a position that was institutionally recognized. My first email went to a sociologist in Chad. I explained the doctoral project, my research topic, and my preliminary fieldwork plan, and requested a visit or an academic placement. The sociologist replied to confirm receipt and said the matter would be reported upward. Those few lines made it seem as though something might move forward. Soon after, I was asked to submit a clearer work plan. I prepared that plan, and a phone conversation was proposed. We went back and forth confirming the time difference, available hours, and contact details. Yet the conversation somehow broke off before it ever took place.
I then turned to another route, contacting scholars working on Chad from institutions in the Global North. A North America–based scholar with long experience in Chad wrote back. No visiting opportunity could be offered, I was told, and the warning was blunt: in Chad, French was almost the only workable language for research; archives and documents depended heavily on in-person consultation; universities and research institutes were frequently affected by power and internet cuts. Even so, I was introduced to a senior administrator in the humanities and social sciences at a Chadian university. After that introduction, my inbox again fell silent.
Formal support structures were weak enough that I had to rely on a pieced-together network of personal leads, ad hoc contacts, and semi-formal institutional links just to approach the country. During the spring of 2024, I came across a UN video report from the Chadian front line. In it, a Chinese staff member about my age stood near the Chad–Sudan border, introducing work with refugees. The sunlight was harsh, the sky clear, and flashes of wind, sand, camps, and improvised office spaces passed across the screen, briefly releasing me from the gravity of my own failed attempts.
Through a friend of a friend, I managed to contact that person. Once the call connected, the distance shortened immediately. Having moved from headquarters to the field in Chad, the staff member described the rhythm of work on the border and the threshold of daily life without either romanticizing or dramatizing it. Research internship openings in international organizations were scarce, front line positions were too sensitive, global funding cuts were narrowing opportunities, and the few roles that did exist usually demanded levels of French and English proficiency that a Chinese scholar like me could not easily compete with. Even in a structure that looked formally international, access remained selective, precarious, and unevenly distributed.
So, I followed the path that was opened instead: if I were to begin in the capital, who would know local life better? I was redirected to an employee responsible for administrative operations at a Chinese company in N’Djamena. That contact pulled Chad back from the front line into the texture of everyday life: generators, drivers, controlled compounds, security routines, disease prevention, and the way all these details could lock someone into a self-contained order. A Chinese cultural institution in the country was mentioned in passing, along with the suggestion that, if I wanted to get closer to university life and the academic system, I might try speaking to one of the teachers there.
That teacher had already spent several years in Chad and knew the local university system well. The cultural institution and the universities belonged to different systems, but their teachers and administrators interacted closely. I followed the advice I received: I organized my CV and research statement, sent them to the staff responsible for liaison work, and tried to move my personal lead into a more formal channel. Unfortunately, the domestic situation in Chad was turning volatile, and many matters were simply put on hold. Time hung in the air, neither moving forward nor dropping away. The phone conversations returned to one practical reality: there was indeed a shortage of people on the ground, and at that stage the most feasible route would be to enter as a volunteer. That possibility, too, was blocked. My institute reminded me that I was pursuing a doctoral project, not supposed to enter Chad by attaching myself to someone else’s institutional work. So once again I reached the door only to stop there.
What these failed approaches revealed was not simply personal bad luck. They showed how difficult it was to enter Chad when neither the formal nor the informal side of China’s presence there had yet become deep enough to sustain academic access. My institute could do little beyond asking students to make contact on their own, and this was true not only for me. Success depended heavily on whether China’s cooperation with a given country was already mature, whether Chinese universities had built durable local partnerships, whether language barriers could be bridged, and whether someone on the ground could serve as an initial bridge. China’s diplomatic, economic, and academic presence in Chad was still far less consolidated than in many other African countries, and local recognition rarely came on its own. In that sense, what I was confronting was not only the difficulty of Chad, but the early-stage and uneven geography of China’s own area studies presence abroad.
The thinness of China’s presence was also reproduced within the academic structure, in the gap between senior scholars and junior researchers. China’s engagement with area studies long predates the current wave of disciplinary expansion, and earlier generations of scholars were formed under a different historical logic. Many of them built authority under conditions that younger scholars rarely inherit today: long periods working on a single region or problem, relatively concentrated institutional recognition, and sustained access to resources. In my case, the project could designate Chad as a field site, but the practical knowledge required to turn that designation into access was much harder to find. Senior scholars in my institute could lend legitimacy to that designation, and the institute also had junior research associates who had been trained within its own system. What was missing was mid-career scholars capable of directly mentoring doctoral students, extending networks, transmitting practical knowledge, and turning an institutional project into a workable field route. There was no mid-career specialist on Central Africa to guide me, very few people working on francophone Africa more broadly, and many colleagues focused instead on eastern or southern Africa. Even when they wanted to help, their capacity to do so remained limited.
Turning to International Networks Beyond China
For the time being, I had no choice but to shift my gaze toward a more indirect route: to buy time, linguistic room, and institutional flexibility through a visiting position in a Global North institution. With my supervisor’s help and the funding from my institute, I eventually secured visiting status at a university in the United States from September 2024 to August 2025. While I kept searching for access to Chad, I received similar responses. Research resources were thin, institutional connections were loose, and the costs of language and security were simply too high. People spoke from the standpoint of academic planning, and some advised me directly to change countries altogether, noting that universities in the Global North were rarely willing to let students shoulder such uncontrollable risks alone without systematic institutional support.
If the road to Chad remained blocked, perhaps turning to South Sudan might still offer a path not yet fully closed off. At an academic event, I met a minister from South Sudan. The minister listened carefully as I described my research plan, welcomed the idea of my doing my dissertation there, and even offered to introduce me to local research resources. For a moment, I had already begun redrawing the map in my mind. I did not want to give up Chad, but I needed a solid point of entry somewhere. That still unformed hope was soon withdrawn. My institute informed me that South Sudan had already been “assigned” to “West Asia and North Africa,” whereas I belonged to a “Sub-Saharan Africa” research program.
That winter in the United States, I attended the 2024 annual meeting of the African Studies Association in Chicago. With temperatures dropping well below freezing, the city, packed with gleaming modern buildings, felt as though it could barely breathe. I was wearing trousers entirely unsuited to winter and a thin pair of leather shoes, the only shoes I had that seemed appropriate for a conference. My institute rarely provided conference funding to students who had not yet entered the field. During the day, wind poured through the cuffs of my trousers as I walked quickly through the streets.
Figure 2. Chicago in the winter of 2024
The conference itself, however, was unexpectedly warm. I sat through panel after panel related to Chad’s neighboring countries and the broader region in which it was located, trying to place myself within that regional context. A few scholars from northern Cameroon were willing to listen to my research plans and agreed to keep an eye out for possible contacts. I also joined a network for emerging scholars and carefully introduced my research interests and the wish to contact institutions in Chad.
Near the end of the conference, I was standing at the edge of the hall, casually exchanging a few words with an India-based scholar. That scholar, too, came from a relatively marginal position within African studies. When I mentioned the difficulties I had been having in trying to enter Chad, the scholar looked surprised: a Europe-based Africanist had just been speaking about a Chinese student in the emerging scholars’ network who was planning to do research in Chad. That student, it turned out, was me. The Europe-based Africanist had apparently remarked in passing, “That student should get in touch with me.” But no one seemed to know how to reach this Africanist. Without much hope, I turned back toward the association’s awards ceremony. A little while later, the India-based scholar suddenly approached me again from behind and lightly tapped me on the shoulder. “That professor is at that table,” I was told. “You should go talk to them.”
I followed the scholar’s gaze. The Europe-based Africanist was standing not far away, bag already in hand, looking as though departure was imminent. I walked over nervously and introduced myself in the final minutes before the event ended. My palms were sweating as I explained, as honestly as I could, my research interests, my situation, and the difficulties I had been encountering. The Africanist listened carefully and said the predicament was understandable. Academic contact with several Europe-based colleagues working on Chad had been maintained. If I wished, inquiries could be made on my behalf.
After I returned home, I sent a follow-up email in keeping with the conventions of academic networking. A week later, I received a brief reply. A month later, the promise was fulfilled: the Africanist introduced me to several relevant European scholars. One of those replies led directly to a video call. The conversation with the European scholar ranged from research questions to the practical realities of arrival: where it might be better to live, how one might gradually extend one’s movements from the capital into other parts of the country, how to assess and respond to security risks. After our call, the European scholar sent an introduction email to the head of a research institute in Chad. I was still hesitating over my wording and timing, fingers hovering above the send button as if above the lip of a pocket. But the head of the institute did not wait for me to produce a properly polished message. A direct reply arrived, with a formal invitation letter for three months attached.
My own institute, however, treated the project as long-term fieldwork and insisted that a three-month invitation letter was insufficient for formal approval to leave. This created another round of delay. When I went back to the Chadian side and tried to request a one-year invitation letter, I was told that, from their perspective, there was little practical difference between issuing a three-month letter and a one-year one. Either way, I could only enter Chad first on a short-term visa and then apply locally for longer-term residence. But when I relayed this to my institute, the response remained the same: without a longer invitation letter, the dispatch could not proceed.
I had to run two tracks at once. I used the three-month invitation letter to apply for my visa so that I would at least retain the possibility of entering Chad, while simultaneously trying to secure a longer invitation letter through another local institution. That second process depended on a different set of contacts, many of them built through the networks I had developed while in the United States. It took another one to two months of effort to find a second institution willing to support the request, and many more months before the formal long-term invitation letter was finally issued. By then it was already August 2025, and my proposed departure had been set in September. According to my institute’s rules, flights should have been booked roughly two months before departure, but I could not purchase a ticket until the dispatch procedure had been approved. The delay then generated yet another application, this time to explain why my departure had been pushed back. Overall, even after the route into Chad had finally opened, entry still depended on my ability to keep translating between systems that did not share the same assumptions.
Figure 3. National Square in N’Djamena, partially built with Chinese involvement
This experience points to a particular limit in the internationalization that has accompanied the rise of China’s area studies. China has developed a relatively mature Chinese-language scholarly world of its own, with established institutions, conferences, publication circuits, funding channels, and internal systems of recognition. That system can reproduce itself: it trains doctoral students, absorbs some of them back into the same institutions as junior researchers, circulates prestige, and sustains authority without relying heavily on deeper cross-regional academic embeddedness. Yet in my case, the international experience available within my own academic environment did not become a stable infrastructure for field entry. Even in an institute with collaborations across Chinese institutions and some degree of international exchange, those links did not readily translate into systematic guidance, durable referral networks, or practical mediation for a difficult field site like Chad. Much of the available internationalization remained dispersed and attached to individual scholars rather than consolidated into an institutional chain of support. I therefore had to piece together access in a strikingly individualized way, moving across North American, European, Indian, Cameroonian, and China-linked networks rather than through a durable academic route that my own institution could reliably extend.
Ambition without Ground
Over time, this prolonged experience also became part of understanding China’s area studies. The obstacles I encountered were never reducible to one difficult country, one failed contact, or one especially unlucky route. The problem was not only that support was limited in one difficult field site, but that the expansion of China’s area studies has often moved faster than the practical conditions needed to carry researchers into such sites.
One dimension of this problem lay in the strategic logic through which the field was being organized. The current expansion of China’s area studies is often framed in the language of national strategy, frontier knowledge, and broader geopolitical vision. In that sense, the emphasis on strategy is not entirely new. What has changed is China’s position in the world, not the persistence of a top-down logic that asks individual researchers to align their own trajectories with larger disciplinary and national ambitions. In practice, this can obscure the slower, more uneven process through which a doctoral student actually becomes capable of entering and sustaining fieldwork in a difficult setting.
In my case, that logic was visible in the arbitrariness with which the doctoral project operated. South Sudan could appear as a possible route at one moment and then be blocked at another because it had been reassigned to a different regional framework. My cohort in Sub-Saharan African studies was given only three fixed destinations, all of them difficult sites, whereas later cohorts were generally allowed to choose much more freely across the region. From above, the project spoke the language of long-term planning and frontier expansion. From below, it often felt contingent, uneven, and difficult to justify. The issue was not simply that the project was new, but that its strategic imagination moved faster than any stable operational logic.
That tension became sharper when institutional weakness was met not with flexibility, but with greater rigidity. As fieldwork gained symbolic importance, the practical difficulties of reaching difficult sites were not always anticipated with the same seriousness. Instead, these difficulties were often pushed back onto junior researchers. Routes that did not fit the project’s preferred image of legitimate field entry were discouraged. In this way, structural weakness did not remain at the institutional level. It was redistributed downward, where it became delay, anxiety, financial strain, and the gradual narrowing of a junior researcher’s room to maneuver.
A comparative perspective makes the issue clearer. Area studies in North America, Europe, Japan, and parts of the Global South have long depended on accumulated academic networks, durable local partnerships, and established forms of scholarly mediation. In my case, the route that finally brought me to Chad depended on an already established international academic network built over many years between several well-established European scholars and Chadian academic institutions. I was fortunate to find that network and to be received by it at a moment when it remained open enough to accommodate an outsider like me. What this suggests is not simply that my own path was unusually difficult, but that students in one emerging formation of China’s area studies are sometimes expected to assume a role that, in more established settings, is more often carried by institutions and senior scholars with long-built networks. This was precisely what many accomplished scholars in the Global North found striking when I discussed my case with them: although their students also conduct fieldwork in Chad, they do so through much more mature academic infrastructures and with far stronger mediation already in place.
In the end, what the electricity made impossible to ignore was not simply that fieldwork in Chad was difficult. It was that so much of that difficulty had to be privately absorbed. I eventually arrived not because the structure had worked as intended, but because I was able, with some luck, to piece together a route across institutional gaps, informal contacts, and transnational academic networks beyond China. That route was real, but highly contingent. The costs accumulated in time, exhaustion, and the quiet erosion of physical and emotional capacity through which research was nevertheless expected to continue. What I encountered in Chad was therefore not only a field site, but the cost of entering a field whose strategic ambition had expanded faster than the structures needed to sustain the researchers sent into it.
Figure 4. The author with a local Chadian on a street in N’Djamena
Aidan Huang is a Chinese doctoral researcher currently conducting long-term fieldwork in Chad. Working across academic research, nonfiction, and public writing, she focuses on Global China and decoloniality of knowledge production. Her recent writing has appeared in Africa Is a Country and Courrier international. More work can be found on her website.
Note: Some names, affiliations and minor identifying details have been anonymized or slightly modified to protect privacy while preserving the accuracy of the account. All photographs are from the author with the consent of those photographed.
To cite this essay, please use the bibliographic entry suggested below:
Aidan Huang, “‘It took me one and a half years to enter the field’: A field note on the gaps of China’s area studies,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, July 7, 2026; https://doi.org/10.52698/FYCP8561.