Tianhe Chen was born in Suzhou, China. He has long been interested in how market-oriented social transformations and differentiations are deeply intertwined with people's everyday struggles and self-identities, especially in how people understand their lives and make expression in an unstable society. His master's thesis focuses on how workers and managers in a state-owned enterprise in southern Jiangsu were involved in and affected by the ownership reform in the late 1990s. His current project is about underdog culture on the Chinese Internet, a loosely connected community usually using "抽象文化" (Chinese pronunciation: "chou xiang wen hua"; meaning: "Abstract Culture"), as the resource of their discourses. He is interested in topics like body, language (semiotics), memory, silence, gender, shame, and resistance.