The project presented here by the Department of Sociology of Fudan university (Shanghai) and the Center for Studies on Modern and Contemporary China of the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (Paris), with the support of the Beida University (Départment of Sociology and Anthropology) is concerned with the preservation and enrichment process of qualitative and quantitative data about a village community located in Zhejiang province (Lianmin village) rather than with purely academic research. It includes three stages: the first one is to complement the extensive data already collected about Lianmin village, the second one is to carry out the necessary stages to articulate it into a sound and comprehensive database; the third one is to make this preliminary database available to a group of fifteen international scholars that will use it to develop various research projects, having thus an opportunity to react to the quality, presentation, coherence of the database. At the end of the international conference presenting both the scientific papers of these scholars and their suggestions or criticisms regarding the content and form of the data gathered, the database about Lianming village will be revised, improved and finally made widely available to the scientific community on electronical support. From our perspective, the building of such an electronic database and its preliminary use by reputed scholars coming from different backgrounds to test its form and content while using it to pursue effective research projects are part and parcel of the same objective : to constitute a reliable, coherent and efficient database that might be enlarged in the future with new data. Through the present project, our common ambition is thus to make the informations gathered in Lianming village database available as a kind of "electronic fieldwork" to the present and future community of social scientists anchored in a variety of disciplines and interested in the history of China countryside during the 20th century. From the time being, the data already collected on Lianming village constitute the most exhaustive information, whether from a qualitative or quantitative point of view, ever gathered on a single village community in China. We fear that it would be a great loss if such data was to remain inaccessible to the wider scientific community in China as well as abroad, or be dispersed and disappear. One of the main purposes of the present project is to proceed with the digitalization process of the numerous documents already gathered (estimated duration of such a task : two years). This main task will be associated to another core activity : to complete the data already collected in order to build a more comprehensive database. Such work will be performed along two dimensions : When the data already available will be digitalized and the complementary data collected, fifteen reknown scholars coming from Taiwan, Mainland China, Europe and the United States will be invited to choose a research project and to carry it out by using the existing Lianmin village database. Under their guidance, the members of the research executive team in charge during the two first years of the project of the collection process of new material regarding Lianmin village will look for the complementary oral or written information required for each of the fifteen studies and missing in the database. Such information will be later incorporated into the database in the hope to thus build a more comprehensive and useful database. One year after launching these fifteen research projects related to Lianmin village, an international conference will be held to discuss the scholars' scientific findings but also to hear their appreciations regarding the database in process. We will ask them to write a brief report with their comments regarding the Lianmin village/Zhang Letian database and their suggestions to improve it. The electronic database will finally be processed and made available to the wider scientific community.