Yan's 2003 Private Life Under Socialism is an influential anthropology text which addresses the development of the individual as a central social category in rural and community life in China, tying these changes to broader structural forces of individualization during the country's rapid modernization process.
[2]: 12 Yan noticed fewer violations of China's One-Child policy among rural populations in the 1990s who were historically resistant.
He believes this change is because these rural parents, having grown up with birth planning, placed a higher value on material comforts and individual happiness compared to earlier generations.
[3] Yunxiang Yan is also a featured subject, together with Tianjian Shi and Emily Wu, in Chris Billing's 2005 documentary Up to the Mountain, Down to the Village.
[4] From 1968 onwards more than 17 million high school students and young adults were sent "up to the mountain, down to the village" (上山下乡 shang shan, xia xiang) to "learn from the peasants."