Page "Chinese historiography" Paragraph 69

Finally, current scholars have taken an increasing interest in the lives of common people and tapped documentary and historical evidence that was previously not analyzed.

Examples of these records include a large mass of governmental and family archives which have not yet been processed, economic records such as census records, price records, land surveys, and tax records.

In addition there are large numbers of cultural artifacts such as vernacular novels, how-to books, and children's books, which are in the process of being analyzed for clues as to how the average Chinese ( if there was such as thing ) lived.