Alice Yao

“The Neanderthal in Me” investigates how the rise of direct-to-consumer ancestry testing in China is reshaping ideas of identity, race, and belonging. While often associated with US firms like 23andMe, Chinese companies such as WeGene and 23Mofang now dominate the domestic market by offering results tailored to Asian populations.
Based on four years of research, including analysis of online discussion forums and interviews with paleogenomicists, the study explores how Neanderthal inheritance—expressed through percentages and genetic markers—has entered everyday conversations about ancestry. Far from signaling extinction, Neanderthal DNA, which is widely shared among Han populations, has become a point of curiosity and reflection, raising questions about homogeneity, difference, and shared origins.
These genetic insights do not simply reinforce existing national narratives; they also open up new ways of thinking about identity that extend beyond the nation-state, linking individuals to deeper histories of human variation. By tracing how genetic information moves between laboratories, commercial platforms, and everyday users, “The Neanderthal in Me” highlights how ideas about race and belonging are being reshaped in contemporary China.

This regional settlement survey of the Lake Dian Basin in Yunnan Province is a Sino-American collaborative project between the Yunnan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the University of Michigan. This region was once the “center” of the “Dian Kingdom” (fourth century BC to 109 BC), a Bronze Age Civilization at the crossroads between Central Plains Chinese states and peninsular Southeast Asia. An understanding about the timing and emergence of this society as well as its sociopolitical organization depends on future archaeological research. An investigation into the sociopolitical developments of this region will also expand our current understanding of cross-regional interaction in the ancient East and Southeast Asia. The Yunnan Institute is collaborating with Michigan on a settlement survey project that applies systematic full coverage methods in the Lake Dian basin. The project goals are to 1) identify variations in settlement location and size; 2) collect surface samples for determining occupation periods and activities; and 3) collect organic samples from exposed archaeological features for dating and botanical analysis. Because archaeologists from the two western institutions are recognized for successfully applying full coverage survey in both Old and New World contexts, a collaboration of this nature supports the cross-cultural dissemination of this archaeological application.