P'ei Wen-chung (1903?-), discoverer of Peking Man (Sinanthropus pekinensis). Long associated with the Choukoutien excavations, he worked after 1950 in association with the Chinese Academy of Sciences at Peking.

Little is known about P'ei Wen-chung's family background or early years except that he was born in Luanhsien, Hopei, and that he majored in geology at Peking University. At the time of P'ei's graduation in 1928, there was much excitement in the archaeological world about the discovery of paleontological specimens, including two hominid teeth, in the limestone caves at Choukoutien, near Peking. In 1927 the Geological Survey of China, in cooperation with the Peking Union Medical College and with the financial assistance of the Rockefeller Foundation, undertook large-scale excavations at the Choukoutien site. The Laboratory of Cenozoic Research was established, with such distinguished scientists participating in its work over the years as Davidson Black, Franz Weidenreich, O. Zdansky, W. Granger, B. Bohlin, R. W. Chaney, Henri Breuil, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. P'ei Wen-chung joined the China Geological Survey as a field assistant at the Choukoutien site. Because many of the Western scientists worked there for short periods of time and because circumstances required that a Chinese serve as the principal field coordinator, P'ei soon became the field director of the Choukoutien excavations. Thus, he participated in all field seasons from 1928 until 1939 at all the fossiliferous stations. In 1929 P'ei Wen-chung unearthed the first Peking Man skull. His article "An Account of the Discovery of an Adult Sinanthropus Skull in the Choukoutien Deposit," which appeared in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of China later that year, made him famous overnight. In the next decade, the fossil remains of more than 40 individuals were uncovered on what proved to be the richest paleoanthropological site of the Middle Pleistocene age known to the world. P'ei also helped focus attention on the artifacts of Peking Man, describing in a series of reports the paleolithic implements from Choukoutien. These reports included the "Notice on the Discovery of Quartz and Other Stone Artifacts in Lower Pleistocene Hominid-bearing Sediments of the Choukoutien Cave Deposit" and (with Teilhard de Chardin) "The Lithic Industry of the Sinanthropus Deposits in Choukoutien," of 1931; "Palaeolithic Industries in China," which appeared in G. G. MacCurdy's Early Man in 1937; "New Fossil Material and Artifacts Collected from the Choukoutien Region During the Years 1937 to 1939"; and "The Upper Cave Industry of Choukoutien," of 1940. These works earned him a well-deserved reputation as the foremost Chinese scientist in the field of Early Man in China.

In 1933 P'ei directed the excavation of the upper cave at Choukoutien which resulted in the discovery of the fossil remains of a family group of seven, examples of Homo sapiens of the later Pleistocene or earliest post-Pleistocene period. This discovery filled an important gap in the knowledge of human forms between the appearance of Sinanthropus and Modern Man in north China. In 1935 P'ei was a member of a reconnaissance team of geologists working in Kwangsi which located four caves in which mesolithic implements were found. These were among the first such sites to be investigated in southwest China. A summary of the Kwangsi expedition was contained in P'ei's "On a Mesolithic Industry of the Caves of Kwangsi," published in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of China in 1935.

On National Government orders, P'ei remained in Peiping after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 and continued to work at Choukoutien until 1939. For the next few years, he taught Chinese archaeology at a number of universities in occupied Peiping and did research on the neolithic archaeology of China. His interest in this field led him to make brief investigations in the Peiping area of later prehistoric sites and a major archaeological reconnaissance trip to Kansu in 1947. These researches led to two books, Shih-ch'ien shih-ch'i chih hsi-pei [northwest China in prehistoric times] and Chung-kuo shih-ch'ien shih-ch'i chih yen-chiu [researches on prehistoric China], both published in 1948. After Peiping fell to the Chinese Communists in January 1949, P'ei Wen-chung decided to remain there and support the new regime. In the latter part of March, he became a member of the Chinese delegation to the World Peace Conference. He returned to Peiping in the latter part of May and joined a training class for political cadres. He then was assigned to a study group for technical personnel. During his three months of political indoctrination, he participated in class discussions and attended public meetings. In September 1949 he declared in writing that he had discovered the applicability of the theory of dialectical materialism to the study of geology, palaeontology, and archaeology. In 1952 he contributed an article entitled "Wo hsueh-hsi-le shemma" [what I studied] to the symposium Wo-ti Ssu-hsiang shih tsemma-yang chuan-pien-kuo-lai-ti [how I came to accept communism], which told of his acceptance of Marxism as a guide for his specialized studies. P'ei Wen-chung held a number of scientific posts in the People's Republic of China. In 1951 he served as president of the Chinese Palaeontological Association and as a director of- the All-China Federation for the Dissemination of Scientific and Technical Knowledge. The following year, he was elected to the board of directors of the Chiu-san-hsueh-she, a political organization which had been founded in 1944 at Chungking by scientists and other intellectuals who were critical of the National Government's policies. P'ei became a member of the society's central committee in 1953 and its deputy secretary general in 1958. He represented the Chiu-san-hsueh-she at the 1954 and 1959 sessions of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. In 1955 he was appointed to the department of biological and earth sciences in the Chinese Academy of Sciences and to the scientific committee of the academy's institute of vertebrate palaeontology. Beginning in 1949 P'ei Wen-chung directed excavations at Choukoutien under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1951 he took charge of a dig at Tzuyang, Szechwan, where a skull of Homo sapiens of the Upper Pleistocene period was found by railroad workers. This skull was of particular interest to archaeologists because it was one of the earliest Modern Man fossils unearthed in East Asia and because it bore some morphological resemblance to both Upper Cave Man and Peking Man. In 1954 P'ei directed the Tingts'un excavations at Hsiangfen, Shansi, where a new paleolithic assemblage, including three hominid teeth, was found. An analysis of the teeth revealed that Tingts'un Man was phylogenetically situated between Peking Man and Modern Man and was close to the Neanderthals, especially Ordos Man. A summary of the Tingts'un finds, by P'ei and others, appeared in 1958 under the title Shan-hsi Hsiang-fen hsien Ting-ts'un chiu-shihch'i shih-tai i-chih fa-chueh pao-kao [report on the excavations of the paleolithic site at Tingts'un in Hsiangfen hsien, Shansi]. A Dutch palaeontologist, G. H. R. von Koenigswald, had discovered three giant teeth in a Hong Kong drug shop in 1939 and had identified them as belonging to a species of giant ape, which he named Gigantopithecus blacki in honor of Davidson Black. Controversy arose in the 1940's when Franz Weidenreich and some other European scientists decided that the teeth had belonged to a giant ape-man. In 1956 a peasant, Tan Hsiu-huai, discovered a Gigantopithecus lower jaw, with 12 teeth in place, in a limestone cave at Liucheng, Kwangsi. P'ei Wen-chung and other scientists undertook excavations in Kwangsi and recovered, among other fossil remains, about 50 Gigantopithecus teeth. After studying these remains, P'ei concluded that "it is fundamentally a giant ape; therefore, I endorse Koenigswald's original idea." He described the ape as having been about 12 feet tall and a contemporary of Peking Man. The teeth indicated that the ape ate a mixed meat and vegetable diet and that it was "perhaps approaching the status of man." P'ei's report on the Kwangsi remains, "Discovery of Gigantopithecus Mandibles and Other Material in the Liu-ch'eng District of Central Kwangsi in South China," was published in Vertebrata Palasiatica in 1957. P'ei Wen-chung's discoveries and his studies of Pleistocene palaeontology, human fossils, and paleolithic cultures were important scientific contributions. He aptly described himself as a quarternary geologist by training and profession, a paleolithic archaeologist on the side, and a neolithic archaeologist as an amateur.