Fei Xiaotong , China's most distinguished sociologist who has died aged 94, lost his wife in 1935 after just three months' marriage when she fell into a ravine.
The tragedy happened in September 1935 during field research in Guangxi when Fei stepped on a tiger trap and severely injured his foot. His wife, a fellow sociologist, died going to find help.
While recovering from injuries in his home town, Fei applied his training as a sociologist to study life in a nearby village. The resulting book, Peasant Life in China, established his reputation as a brilliant scholar.
Fei remarried in 1939 and had a daughter, Fei Zonghui.
Born in 1910, the youngest of five children in a Jiangsu family, Fei's father studied in Japan and his mother was a devout Christian.
As a young man, Fei wanted to become a doctor but changed his mind to study sociology. 'Understanding and changing China' became his mission and he breezed through Yenching University, earned a master's degree from Tsinghua University and won a scholarship to study in Britain.
