This paper examines care and healing among the Nisu people from China’s southwest. Through a series of interviews and participant observation, the author explores how the indigenous concept and practice of care are reconfigured and entwined with clinical medicine and modern technology when mobility increases, as the local community are provided with better accessibility to the national and world job market. Ethnographic evidences have shown that an increasing number of Nisu are migrating to modern metropolises, but in times of illness, they still resort back home to persists Bimo, by means of communications technology. This research finds that such care praxis stems from their long-time practice of “absentee-healing”, where there is a cultural validity for the patients to be absent from the healing rituals, yet without being totally disconnected. This paper concludes that in a world with increasing fluidity and mobility, acting upon economic rationality, more people who were previously isolated can now migrate to seek better economic opportunities, and “Heal from home”, as a type of care reconfiguration, can help administer both physical and mental care for those thousands of miles away from local cultures. In addition, it also serves as a means of reorienting oneself in the concrete jungle of uncertainties, helping make void spaces into humanly places, while maintaining strong social and cultural ties with home.
