I grew up watching my mother and my aunt faithfully follow a spirit medium to worship a Goddess. As a child who had accepted atheist education, I couldn’t help but wonder what made them so firmly believe in something stigmatized as “superstition”, which leaded me to build my MAT on the spirit-medium cult in my hometown. While I already cultivated my academic interests in anthropology during professional study, it was not until I conducted an independent fieldwork that I truly comprehended its appeal. After some time in the workforce, the academic puzzle emerged during my study in college continued to occupy my thoughts. I couldn’t convince myself that I could live my life without unraveling it. So, I found my way back to the academia.

Inspired by my preliminary exploration of popular religion, mediumship, gender, space and urbanization in southern China, I intend to expand my research and investigate how ordinary residents in the city reconstruct their spiritual life as a form of urban aspiration when faced with the predominating ideology of secularism enforced by state, and how religion is rendered an elusive nature of Chinese urban landscape, adding to the discussion that goes beyond the dichotomy between modern-tradition, city-rural and secular-religion, a dichotomy deeply anchored in the colonialist temporality and takes a strong form of spatiality.