Born and having grown up in a city with millions of migrants from different backgrounds, I have been always curious about their lives. Having explored the inequalities and differentiation among people in the past few years, I have now switched my focus to finding the merits of diverse lifestyles as well as the commonality shared by humans. I have broad academic interests including intimacy, gender, class, work, body and visual anthropology, and hope to expand my fields in the future.

During my undergraduate and master’s years, I have carried out research on takeaway riders, hairstylists in mainland China and the Chinese academic diaspora. In my MPhil dissertation, I investigated the class performance of hairstylists in mid- and high-end hair salons in Guangzhou, who were mostly male rural-to-urban migrants. Specifically, I studied their experience in the acquisition of urban middle-class cultural capital. Based on this research, I hope to learn about the masculinities of male rural-to-urban migrant hairstylists in my PhD.