Have you ever experienced such a moment: you saw/heard/felt somebody did something you could not understand/make sense of, but it seemed that that person must/ought/feel like to do that and that thing seemed to be of certain importance to he/she/ta? What did you do? Did you ask a question of why and try to find out the reason? Did it make more sense to you afterward? If not, how did you think? There is one anthropological story which I still remember so clearly. An anthropologist in apprentice complained to his teacher about the indigenous people they were studying, who claimed that they saw a star that “should not be there theoretically”. The teacher sadly told his apprentice that the attitude shown by his speech would possibly make him a failed anthropologist. Some decades of years, there is the news about the star which should not be there was observed by some methods, and interestingly, there are still debates of whether the star exists and can be observed or not. Anthropology to me is like a journey that takes me/anyone from where I (seem to) know, to places (seems to be) unknown to me. The journey for me to have chosen anthropology after my DSE, to the discovery of this story, and to my struggling in writing my Mphil thesis now, is definitely unimaginable at the beginning and I am curious to see where it will end (but first I need to get a job after graduation).

My research is about the process of how “public persons”, who have very limited resources and face many exclusions start to concern and participate proactively, collectively in the society, can be nurtured. The fieldsite, old district autonomy advancement group (odaag), is an intersection of issues of urban renewal/urban redevelopment, gentrification, grass-root community organization and media technology in Hong Kong, a model city of neoliberal capitalistic development, as well as a place with extreme wealth gap which intertwined with its unique ethnic and gender issues and reflected in the lacking and liquidized living space, atomized social relation among strangers/citizens, and other dimensions of lives of the grassroots. This ethnographic research studied how “gentrification” is experienced, lived, talked about and reacted by local residents and odaag. It also studies about the relationship between a form of “slower” media practiced by odaag, which is characterized by its consciousness towards the use of media, emphasis on “collective participation”, and reflexivity, with the organization of people.