本文以田野觀察和實證資料，分析了當代中國青年接觸宗教記號、表象與實踐的某些非制度性途徑。文章指出，由於中國大陸特殊的政治和社會因素，宗教往往是以世俗的、非常規的、策略性的或是被扭曲的形態進入、保存在民眾的生活世界中的。這種非制度性的宗教重建，不僅和制度性的宗教重建同樣重要，甚至還構成了後者的動力，是我們理解當代中國“宗教熱”的一個關鍵。事實上，正是由於當局對於制度宗教的嚴格控制，吊詭地促進了制度宗教之外的種種個體式的、新興宗教式的宗教性的繁榮。

This article examines how is it possible that the Chinese young people become interested in the religion in a country where the political power holds the anti-religious policies. In fact, besides the restoration of the institutional religions in the past twenty years in China, there is also a considerable circulation of the religious representations and practices through the social and cultural spaces in different non-institutional forms. The religious signs out of the institutional frameworks constructs a stock of symbolic references available for the youth. This religious reconstruction in a diffuse, non-institutional and secularized manner creates an important dynamic of religious development in contemporary China. To some extent, the strict control of the religious institutions by the Chinese government favors paradoxically the prosperity of the individual, non-institutional and sectarian forms of the religiosity.