The small Han Buddhist temples in peripheral Shanghai have been facing the challenges of forced relocation or re-demolished during the ever-changing urban restructuring and the religious revival since the 1970s. Which temple can be recovered and which one is not qualified? In the research, the author discovered that the political legitimacy of chosen recovered temples was about the doctrines related to the historic and traditionalism. Those doctrines have reinforced the political legitimacy of male-dominant religious space. Therefore, many small nunneries were not permitted to be recovered due to their political and historical statuses before 1970. Unusual from the big narrative of male-centered stories on religious revival, some invisible nuns, because of their resistances and continuing practices, have successfully gained the different political legitimacy of religious space for female clergies. Those nuns, who have been persistently ascetic to resist the persecution, have created the alternative prototypical for religious recovery, which is different neither form the discourse of historic nor traditionalism.