He was born in Wujiang County, Jiangsu Province, in eastern China and began his higher education at Yenching University in Beijing, planning to study medicine. But deciding that China's problems were social and political rather than medical, he turned to sociology.
2005 May 9, Wolfgang Saxon, “Fei Xiaotong, 94, a Pioneer in Chinese Anthropology, Is Dead”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 2015-05-29, Obituaries