The article examines the work of the first generation of Chinese anthropologists, who emulated the late-Qing intellectuals in the indigenization of colonial science through contacts with European and American colleagues. The analysis is set against the backdrop of the historical, political and ideological context of the Republic of China (1911–1949). Although the Chinese historiography ex-post profiled the anthropologists as members of two competing schools, the article argues that they rather formed a fieldwork-oriented community of practice. Within this loose community, they opened up a discursive space not only for confrontation with their common enemy during the Second Sino-Japanese War but also for a critical interrogation of the racial assimilationist ethnic policies of the ruling Kuomintang. With their different approaches, the debates among them produced various conceptualizations of their common goal: a unified Chinese nation.