Huaxi Plants :1920-1937

The study of disciplinary history of Chinese anthropology shows that the early Chinese anthropology researches were once prosperous. Some scholars focusing on disciplinary history studies argue that there was "The South School","The Northern School" and "The Western-China School" of anthropology during the early period. To clarify the seedbed or origins of the Western-China School of Anthropology, this paper is going to mainly discuss the botany research which was a part of the Natural History pursued by a number of missionaries who were working in the West China Union University from1920to1937. Taking the social and ideaistic situations of that time into consideration, the author found that the missionaries'activities about the Natural History benefited a lot from the missionary network that had set up in Western China, meanwhile, their Natural History activities'"road maps" were usually exactly the same as the missionary network. Simultaneously, the missionaries' botanize closely related to their anthropological research. Under the circumstance of the interaction of Natural History and anthropology, the Botanize carried out by missionaries was intertwined with the Natural and humanity realm of West China. Finally, anthropological research in West China Union University gradually presented its features based on the natural history and these features got inherited in the future subsequent research. The Anthropology research carried out by missionaries in West China Union University among the interaction of humanity and natural realm at that time shed light on the understanding of Chinese anthropology in the early age.