Guanyin statues are materially and spiritually everywhere in Hong Kong — in Buddhist monasteries, popular temples, wayside shrines, private homes, jade markets, museums, antiquity shops, and more. In each of these contexts, Guanyin statues can be marked with new meanings even as their previous meanings are expunged. In this talk, Dr. Chip Colwell will use the case of Guanyin statues in Hong Kong to open a line of inquiry on how objects are like palimpsests — like a parchment from which writing has been partially erased to make space for another text. Last summer in Hong Kong, Dr. Colwell and colleagues at HKU followed the life-course of Guanyin statues, considering their production, circulation, animation, and disposal. This research suggests processes of inscription and erasure can be systematically recorded in contexts of Guanyin statue production and consumption by tracking the behaviors and expressed beliefs of different social actors and documenting the materiality of these objects as they move through physical and social spaces. This ethnography of things can perhaps both explain the processes that give Guanyin layers of meanings, and test the viability of an overarching palimpsest theory of objects.