Multiple structural transformations, including globalization, digitalization and intelligentization, urbanization, and population aging, are reshaping the ontological significance, practical forms, and social functions of leisure. Consequently, there is an urgent need to revisit and reflect upon existing leisure studies. First, it is essential to refocus on the core concepts and key issues of leisure studies, break through the cognitive limitations of traditional definitions of leisure, re-examine and reinterpret the concept of “leisure”, and critically deconstruct the modernity narrative of the “work-leisure” binary opposition. Second, significant attention must be paid to the complexity and diversity of leisure practices, including a multidimensional examination of the balance between spirituality and physicality in leisure experiences, a dialectical analysis of the dual nature of leisure’s value, and an in-depth investigation of the mechanisms through which technology-society interactions shape leisure. Only through such efforts can leisure studies achieve an organic integration of theoretical localization and international dialogue, realize innovative methodological integration, construct a self-determined yet open Chinese leisure knowledge system, and strengthen its practical orientation toward serving individual well-being and social development.