As a latecomer to anthropology, I stumbled into the field rather unexpectedly—I was trained in sociology, and it wasn’t until I somehow landed a PhD offer from the Chinese University of Hong Kong that I truly set foot on this path. My doctoral research explored the ethics and politics of caregiving for autistic individuals in China, through which I examined how, in an era of privatization-driven familial revival, the state and families negotiate moral responsibility for vulnerable citizens—and how disability rights activism in an authoritarian state can take root in the intimate sphere. As a medical and moral anthropologist, I am drawn to the ways people strive for a good life under structural violence, and I constantly ask myself what I can learn from the experiences of those who persist at the margins.

I returned to China in 2021—right after the anti-extradition movement and in the midst of the pandemic—seeing my home with fresh, if disoriented, eyes. As a scholar from China, I find it impossible not to engage with the revolutionary history of the 20th century, a history that defies conventional visions of the future. This moment in time has drawn me back into questions of social action in all its forms. Wrestling with my own exhaustion and disillusionment, I’ve been rethinking the possibility of hope. Even in the bleakest of times, the pursuit of private well-being holds within it a longing for the public good—one that can only be realized through the steadfast pursuit of the former. I hope my intellectual work and public engagement will not merely shadow power, but rather "play with it".

This postmodern condition has granted me the rare privilege of not having to define myself too rigidly. In truth, I feel I exist in multiple selves: I care about disability politics, Hong Kong’s cultural politics, queerness and feminism, education, medicine, and care. I’m also drawn to STS, environmental issues, land and human-animal relations. I write academic papers and translate scholarly works, but I also contribute cultural criticism, book reviews, and essays to public media. I am a researcher, a writer, a new media editor, I design games with friends—and, in other corners of my life, a football fan, a lover of Peking and Yue opera, a devoted follower of Hong Kong and Taiwanese pop culture, an admirer of film—especially Shaw Brothers and Milkyway Image gangster films—and literature.

Of course, I do carry a few official titles. In the coming years, I will be a researcher in the Robots, Computing the Human, and Autism/Cultural Imaginations of Autism Diagnosis and Emotion AI project at Masaryk University. Through this project, I hope to explore the kinds of knowledge modern societies produce to unmake the category of the “human”—and, more importantly, how we, as humans, might hold our ground and defend our dignity in an age where AI seeks to capture and govern everything.