## Detailed walkthrough
### [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=0s) The "Tile Wall" (Wapan) and the Philosophy of Salvaged Materials
The conversation opens with an observation about architect Wang Shu’s well-known habit of collecting hundreds of thousands of discarded old bricks and tiles from demolished structures across the country. In response, Wang Shu points to the traditional "tile wall" (*wapan*), explaining that these are not inert modern materials; they "breathe" and carry the tangible "traces of life" left by countless hands that touched them over generations. During the height of widespread urban and rural demolition in China, Wang felt a deep moral imperative: as a contemporary intellectual and Chinese architect, failing to respond to this destruction and refusing to make an architectural statement would simply be wrong. The rampant demolition demanded a concrete answer.
Beyond this intellectual conviction, two very pragmatic factors shaped his method. First, when designing and constructing the China Academy of Art (Xiangshan Campus), the institution was severely strapped for cash and had to rely on bank loans. The budget allocated to Wang Shu was less than half the standard construction cost, yet the school leadership insisted on "world-class quality." In surveying the market, Wang discovered that salvaged demolition debris cost only a third or a quarter of the price of new materials, as people at the time regarded these fragments as worthless trash to be hauled away.
Second, while conducting fieldwork in Ningbo, Wang encountered vernacular tile walls that deeply impressed him, prompting him to declare that "the whole village is full of masters!" To compose such a diverse jumble of salvaged debris into a coherent, expressive wall required the sensibility of a master artist. In one four-square-meter section Wang measured, he counted 84 distinct sizes of materials. As the conversation notes, Ningbo is frequently struck by typhoons, which historically flattened local homes. Villagers would quickly rebuild using whatever rubble was immediately on hand. Through repeated storm damage and successive reconstructions, varied fragments became naturally integrated. The nationwide wave of demolition was functionally no different from a recurring typhoon: materials were scavenged rather than neatly sorted, requiring builders to invent new craftsmanship to recombine salvaged fragments into a durable, striking aesthetic.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Origins and Drivers of Wang Shu's Salvaged Tile Wall Technique
accDescr: Diagram illustrating the three main drivers behind the adoption of the recycled wapan tile wall technique.
subgraph Drivers["Drivers of Salvaged Tile Wall Technique"]
D1["Ethical Response:<br/>Confronting rampant demolition"]
D2["Economic Constraint:<br/>Campus budget less than half standard;<br/>recycled scrap cost 1/3 to 1/4"]
D3["Vernacular Precedent:<br/>Typhoon-rebuilt walls in Ningbo<br/>(84 sizes in 4 sq meters)"]
end
Drivers --> Process["Recombining salvaged fragments<br/>with new craftsmanship"]
Process --> Result["Breathing, expressive architecture<br/>carrying living memory"]
```
- In a measured 4-square-meter section of a traditional Ningbo wall, Wang Shu identified 84 distinct material specifications and sizes.
- Recycled demolition materials were acquired at approximately one-third to one-quarter the price of standard building supplies.
---
[02:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=150s) Sustainable Craftsmanship and "Form Following Function"
The discussion turns to how this practice reflects contemporary ideas of sustainability and green architecture, though Wang Shu and his interlocutors note that ancient Chinese wisdom simply framed it as "not wasting things." The first rule of true sustainability is the elimination of waste. In traditional masonry, whole tiles often fractured during demolition into smaller fragments called *pan* (often roughly a quarter of a tile's original size). When constructing double-faced exterior walls, workers laid the intact fragments on both outer faces, while the residual rubble and fine debris dropped during construction were swept directly into the cavity between the walls as structural fill. This closed-loop technique ensured that once the building was completed, the job site was left spotless without a single speck of discarded dust, producing a high-art finish while dramatically cutting costs.
The conversation connects this construction logic to the concept of "form following function." While modern functionalism often feels cold, classical Chinese architectural practice achieved an organic harmony where every structural component served a concrete practical purpose while retaining extraordinary visual beauty. Liang Sicheng famously highlighted this principle in his writings on traditional Chinese architecture, pointing to exposed timber frameworks and the *dougong* (interlocking bracket sets). While modern observers might misinterpret *dougong* brackets as purely ornate decoration, they are fundamentally load-bearing mechanisms that cantilever large overhangs, cushion dynamic loads, and transfer massive roof weight onto the columns. Whereas modern buildings routinely conceal their load-bearing skeletons behind drywall and facades, classical Chinese architecture celebrates its structural logic openly—reflecting an ethical posture of being "consistent inside and out."
---
[04:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=287s) The Inverted Orientation of Wencun Village
Moving from architectural materials to town planning, the discussion focuses on Wang Shu’s rural revitalization project in Wencun Village (Fuyang, Zhejiang). Traditional Chinese settlement patterns strictly follow the geomantic principle of sitting back against the north and facing south toward the sun. Wencun, however, presents a striking anomaly: it completely flips this orientation, sitting in the mountain's shadow and facing away from the sunlight.
Wang Shu offers two explanations for this inverted layout. The first—and by far the most profound—is rooted in the hard practicalities of agrarian survival. A local farmer explained to Wang that villagers deliberately avoided planting trees along the southern boundaries of their plots because the resulting shadows would starve the crops of sunlight. Applying this same logic to the entire village, the inhabitants deliberately chose to build their homes in the cold shade of the mountainside so that every square foot of sunlit, fertile land could be preserved exclusively for agriculture. They willingly accepted harsher living conditions for themselves to ensure optimal crop yields. The second explanation is an ideological legend tracing the village to descendants of a Southern Song dynasty general who situated their homes facing northward as a symbolic gesture of yearning for the lost Central Plains. Wang notes that while the patriotic legend is well-known, the farmer’s agricultural explanation is far deeper and more grounded in reality.
---
[06:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=370s) Courtyards, Layers of Ritual, and the Critique of Modern Directness
The dialogue explores why the courtyard (*yuanluo*) remains an indispensable spatial anchor of authentic Chinese daily life, whether in northern or southern China. Wang Shu recalls examining an old landlord residence in Wencun. Despite having an expansive east-west width, the house was remarkably shallow from north to south—measuring only about 6 meters deep. Immediately inside the front entrance stood a large screen partition, behind which the traditional "Eight Immortals" (*Baxian*) table was placed, nearly touching the threshold, where the elders of the household would sit.
This spatial compression makes the presence of an outer courtyard essential for life’s defining ceremonial milestones. When a herald arrived to announce that a son had passed the imperial examination, or when a newly married couple returned home to bow before their elders, the ceremony required a progressive sequence of entry. The spatial staging described in the *Book of Songs* (*Shijing*) demands moving first through the outer courtyard gate, pausing before the spirit screen wall (*yingbi*), and maneuvering through designated transitional zones before reaching the hall. Without these layers, family rituals lose their gravitas. As the speakers remark, one cannot simply throw open a front door and let outsiders stumble directly into the domestic sanctuary; spatial boundaries mirror the social decorum and etiquette (*li*) taught to virtuous households (invoking Eileen Chang's *Little Reunions*).
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: Spatial Progression of Traditional Chinese Courtyard Entry
accDescr: Sequence showing entry through gate, spirit wall transition, courtyard, and final arrival at the main hall.
Wang Shu defines the essence of ritual (*li*) as a mechanism designed to "delay the occurrence of major events." Meaning emerges through process, restraint, and delayed revelation, whether in architecture, courtship, or ascending a mountain temple where visitors must wind past foothills rather than stepping instantly onto the summit. Modern culture, by contrast, operates on immediate exposure and the elimination of transitions. To illustrate this, the host cites Milan Kundera’s vivid definition of modernity: a woman walking directly into a public restroom in plain view of everyone, stripping away discretion behind transparent plate glass. Classical Chinese culture, by contrast, intentionally structures space to stretch distances, slow down time, and create room for contemplation.
- Traditional landlord homes examined in Wencun featured an interior depth of only around 6 meters from north to south, requiring courtyards to accommodate formal family rituals.
- Classical Chinese spatial entry relies on a multi-stage sequence: courtyard gate $\to$ transitional spirit-wall zone $\to$ courtyard $\to$ interior screen and Eight Immortals table.
[09:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=554s) The Xiangshan Campus Dilemma: Aesthetic Labyrinth vs. Practicality
A guest who considers himself practically half an alumnus of the China Academy of Art opens the conversation with a pointed question about the reality of using the campus. Although based primarily at the Nanshan campus, he had taken numerous electives and participated in events at the Wang Shu–designed Xiangshan campus, experiencing its environment firsthand as an everyday user. He tactfully challenges Professor Wang Shu on the fundamental issue of practicality: the sprawling layout demands significantly longer walking times, classrooms can be notoriously difficult to locate, and the highly sculptural, undulating roofs and unorthodox structures raise questions about everyday utility, natural lighting, and ventilation. The guest admits with self-deprecating humor that he was personally late to class on multiple occasions simply because he got lost wandering through the corridors.
The room laughs as the hosts point out that this is an ongoing grievance voiced by students and visitors alike: while everyone universally agrees the campus is visually breathtaking, getting trapped in a labyrinth when trying to reach a lecture on time is a very real frustration. Wang Shu cheerfully deflects the practical blame, joking that if someone cannot locate their classroom, that is ultimately a failure of signage rather than an architectural flaw, setting up a deeper philosophical defense of his design philosophy.
[10:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=617s) Moroccan Alleys, Heidegger's Settling, and Getting Trapped in Eight Exits
Wang Shu reveals that the spatial design of the Xiangshan campus emerged from a creative impasse resolved by an evening television documentary about a historic town in northern Morocco, where a community of 1950s hippies had lived. The program highlighted two details that permanently reoriented his thinking. First, nobody knew how ancient the settlement was; it possessed an innate "temporality"—a lived-in depth of time that modern, assembly-line buildings completely lack. Second, the town comprised roughly a thousand winding alleys where every outside visitor invariably lost their way, yet longtime locals navigated effortlessly by memorizing minute physical markers, such as a missing brick or an unusual stone tucked into a street corner.
Connecting this to contemporary thought, Wang Shu critiques how modern real estate developers love to cite Martin Heidegger’s famous concept of "poetically dwelling" without understanding its essential prerequisite: settling down. Without rootedness and stability, modern city dwellers who constantly purchase and flip apartments remain mere migrants incapable of true dwelling. Wang Shu asked himself how an institutional campus could cultivate that authentic sense of settled belonging, even if it provoked initial confusion among newcomers.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Wang Shu's Three Architectural Inquiries
accDescr: Diagram illustrating the three conceptual sources behind the design of the Xiangshan Campus.
subgraph S1["Inspiration & Philosophy"]
A["Moroccan Town Documentary"] --> B["Temporality vs. Assembly Line"]
A --> C["1,000 Alleys & Local Navigation"]
D["Heidegger's Poetic Dwelling"] --> E["Prerequisite of Settling Down"]
end
subgraph S2["Campus Architecture"]
B --> F["Sense of Historical Depth"]
C --> G["Intrigue & Active Exploration"]
E --> H["Cultivating Rooted Belonging"]
end
```
To illustrate the comical extremes of this design, Wang Shu shares an anecdote about a faculty staff member who became utterly stranded inside one of the campus's zigzagging buildings. Professor Lu Wenyu encountered the man standing dazed on the second floor, desperate to find an exit. Lu went off to handle half an hour of administrative business, only to return and find the colleague still hovering in the exact same spot, thoroughly bewildered. The punchline was that the structure actually possessed eight separate exits; the staff member was simply paralyzed trying to deduce which one offered the most efficient shortcut.
- The Moroccan town's thousand winding alleys functioned as a living filter: disorienting to transients, but second nature to rooted residents.
- Heidegger’s "poetic dwelling" is structurally impossible for urban "migrants" who bounce perpetually between residential developments without establishing settled roots.
- The stranded faculty member became a living realization of settling down by accident, immobilized by a building that refused to surrender a single, obvious route.
[13:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=793s) The Poetics of Shadows: From Roland Barthes to "In Praise of Shadows"
Wang Shu explains that this spatial disorientation is an intentional aesthetic virtue inspired by French theorist Roland Barthes. Barthes described the ultimate sensation in literature as that of a traveler standing at an intersection, hesitating without knowing which branch to take; becoming acutely conscious of that hesitation is the pinnacle of aesthetic engagement. Wang Shu seeks to translate that psychological hesitation into physical architecture, contrasting it directly with modern buildings that funnel people along mindless, predetermined routes.
Turning to the question of lighting, Wang Shu emphasizes that traditional Chinese architecture deliberately cultivated interior darkness paired with bright, open courtyards. In classical spaces, an occupant sat in quiet, shadowed seclusion, looking out toward the sunlit courtyard—a quintessentially Chinese posture. He notes that modern period dramas frequently distort historical reality by flooding interiors with flat, artificial brightness, when in truth ancient inhabitants lived in deep shadows illuminated only by slivers of sunlight crossing the threshold. Dou Wentao draws a parallel to Stanley Kubrick’s film *Barry Lyndon*, in which the director famously shot scenes exclusively by natural candlelight to evoke the shadowy social atmosphere of 18th-century European aristocracy.
Wang Shu recounts that early 20th-century Western modernism saw a fierce debate between architects advocating floor-to-ceiling windows and those who warned that eliminating shadows would turn residences into sterile, surgical hospital wards. This shadow aesthetic is famously articulated in Jun'ichirō Tanizaki’s treatise *In Praise of Shadows* (*In'ei Raisan*). Heavily shaped by Chinese spatial heritage, traditional Japanese domestic life unfolded in near-darkness, where lovers in *The Tale of Genji* conversed through folding screens with their facial features blurred into silhouettes, and women applied dramatic white cosmetics so their smiles would catch faint flickers of ambient light against the gloom.
[16:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=974s) "Ink in Five Colors" and the Subtle Depths of Xuan Color
The conversation delves into the classical Chinese aesthetic canon of "ink divided into five colors" (墨分五色), which posits that black is not an absence of tone, but the most visually complex and layered spectrum in existence. Rather than being flat or monochromatic, true black encapsulates an entire universe of internal variation.
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: The Spectrum of Xuan Color in Chinese Aesthetics
accDescr: Flowchart showing how the profound black tone contains layered chromatic dimensions.
A["Ink Divided into Five Colors"] --> B["Xuan Color / 玄色"]
B --> C["Chromatic Subtlety: Red, Purple, Green Under-tones"]
B --> D["Material Heritage: Gambiered Guangdong Silk"]
B --> E["Imperial Wardrobe: Qing Regular Court Attire"]
```
Wang Shu points to the traditional garment worn by Professor Lu Wenyu as a tactile demonstration of this principle. The fabric is not ordinary black, but *xuan* (玄色)—a profound, nuanced dark hue derived from ancient Chinese dye traditions. Examining the garment closely reveals that the interior lining and individual frog buttons flash with hidden reds, purples, blues, and greens. Professor Lu explains that the textile is gambiered Guangdong silk (*xiangyunsha*), an artisanal fabric with continuous heritage dating back to the Song dynasty.
Wang Shu debunks a widespread cinematic myth: costume dramas universally dress Qing dynasty emperors in bright imperial yellow from dawn to dusk, whereas historical emperors spent their daily lives in various shades of *xuan*. An emperor could rotate through dozens of subtly distinguished *xuan* robes across consecutive days—one morning infused with an undercurrent of crimson, the next shifting into a muted plum or deep indigo—yet all fell under the austere umbrella of *xuan*.
As the segment concludes, the hosts marvel at how elevated and demanding this philosophy is, raising the ultimate tension: while avant-garde art galleries and exhibition pavilions readily accommodate such uncompromising artistic vision, can everyday, utilitarian buildings truly bear the weight of such profound aesthetic demands without compromising the daily routines of the people who inhabit them?
[18:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=1100s) Rethinking the Standard Flat: Wang Shu’s "Garden-Making" and the Rigid Template
Wang Shu explains that his fundamental rethinking of domestic space began taking shape in the late 1990s, crystallized in his well-known essay "Notes on Garden-Making" (*Garden-Making Technique*). The catalyst was the first two-bedroom, one-living-room apartment assigned to him by his workplace. Rather than accepting the prepackaged floor plan, he radically converted the conventional flat into an interior "garden." He posed a basic existential challenge to the system: by what authority does anyone dictate that a human life must be lived inside a standardized two-bedroom or three-bedroom container? The panel connects this frustration to modern real estate rigidity. A fellow speaker recalls suggesting a thesis topic to his daughter while she was studying architecture at Harvard: design a flexible 100-square-meter flat that could fluidly morph between a two-bedroom apartment, an open loft, or a vast living room and balcony with push-button partition walls.
Despite deep-pocketed developers in places like Hong Kong, such adaptive residences remain virtually nonexistent in the commercial market. The conversation observes that property developers intentionally enforce uniform layouts to homogenize consumer psychology and mass-produce housing units, because structural variance and customizable floor plans introduce market friction, commercial uncertainty, and operational complexity.
- **The Catalyst Essay**: Wang Shu’s late-1990s writing "Notes on Garden-Making," detailing his subversion of his assigned work-unit apartment.
- **The Harvard Thesis Challenge**: Designing a dynamic 100-square-meter footprint with motorized or reconfigurable partitions that transforms on demand between a loft, studio, or multi-bedroom layout.
- **Commercial Disincentive**: Standardized mass layouts condition buyer mindsets, reducing sales friction and guaranteeing predictable turnover for developers.
---
[20:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=1218s) The Vertical Courtyard Experiment: Hangzhou’s Six 100-Meter Towers
Turning from theory to practice, the panel discusses Wang Shu’s ambitious collective housing project in Hangzhou—six 100-meter-tall residential towers housing roughly 800 families. Wang Shu set out to ensure that every household enjoyed an outdoor courtyard in the air, creating the sensory feel of a two-story home rather than an anonymous perch inside a concrete monolith. His goal was deeply pastoral: allowing each resident to look out and say, "The one with the sweet osmanthus tree is my home," distinguishing their dwelling from the neighbor's tree across the way. Bringing this vision to life, however, triggered a collision with mainstream construction economics.
Standard residential high-rises rely on reusable slipform systems where identical floor plates allow formwork molds to slide up week by week from the 1st floor to the 30th floor. Because Wang Shu insisted on staggered double-height courtyards and varying building envelopes, standard slipforms could not be recycled; contractors had to assemble and dismantle custom molds on every single level—multiplying the structural workload up to thirtyfold. This added roughly 1,000 RMB per square meter to structural costs while simultaneously subtracting sellable interior floor area. Although the project ultimately sold out, the developer came away emotionally drained, famously confessing: "At least I was an idealist once in my life, but I will never be an idealist a second time."
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Standard Construction vs Vertical Courtyards
accDescr: Comparison between uniform slipform construction and Wang Shu's custom vertical courtyard towers.
subgraph Standard["Standard High-Rise Practice"]
A["Uniform Floorplate (1–30 Floors)"] --> B["Reusable Slipform Molds"]
B --> C["Rapid Weekly Turnover & Maximum Floor Area"]
end
subgraph Experimental["Hangzhou Vertical Courtyards"]
D["Staggered Double-Height Terraces"] --> E["Non-Reusable Custom Formwork Per Floor"]
E --> F["Cost +1,000 RMB/sqm & Reduced Floor Area"]
F --> G["800 Households with Private Sky Courtyards"]
end
```
---
[23:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=1386s) The Western Kitchen, Modernization Templates, and Spontaneous Life
The conversation broadens to question why urbanites worldwide accept the uniform apartment model as an immutable law. A speaker recalls visiting the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and reflecting on the famed Cold War "Kitchen Debate," where an American leader showed Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev a sleek, open-concept kitchen with a refrigerator, presenting it as the definitive image of how modern civilized life ought to be lived. A century ago, neither Chinese nor Japanese households lived in such cubicles; what modern society treats as standard reality is merely Western-style modernization. Urban dwellers today do not simply purchase identical apartments—they enter prefabricated lifestyle templates that suppress organic communal bonds.
Wang Shu recounts the social experiment behind his two-story, six-meter-high courtyards, sized specifically so residents could cultivate full trees. An early dispute pitted resident-managed planting against centralized property management. Hoping for uniform quality, the developer assigned upkeep to property management, whose perfunctory maintenance caused the trees to wither, leading Wang Shu to fear the project had failed. When he returned for a follow-up visit in 2012, an empty courtyard on one floor brought sharp disappointment, but stepping onto another level revealed a flourishing, resident-curated botanical garden where a neighborhood child was quietly doing homework under dense foliage. The lesson was clear: an architect cannot force behavior, but must provide the spatial conditions that make spontaneous, autonomous life possible.
- **The Cold War Precedent**: The Khrushchev kitchen showcase, used to market American consumerism as the universal template of domestic civilization.
- **Dimensional Requirements**: Courtyards designed at two stories (at least 6 meters high) to accommodate real tree growth.
- **The 2012 Follow-Up**: Returning after receiving a major architectural honor, Wang Shu found that while institutional management failed, tenant initiative turned terraces into thriving micro-botanical spaces.
---
[26:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=1569s) Intellectual Awakening versus Rooted Tradition: From Concrete to Song Dynasty Aesthetics
Asked what he has drawn from Western architecture compared to Chinese tradition, Wang Shu draws a sharp philosophical distinction. Western modernism provided him with intellectual awakening and liberation—the Nietzschean impulse to "re-evaluate all values," question automatic habits, and realize that everything can be reimagined. Conversely, Chinese tradition provided him with a lived philosophy, cultural identity, and a closer ecological alignment with nature. While modern Western building relies on an energy-intensive regime of steel and concrete with limited long-term viability, Wang Shu argues that traditional Chinese spatial thinking possesses far greater regenerative potential for the future.
The discussion highlights that traditional Chinese architecture was never purely functional; it was deeply intertwined with ritual, bodily awareness, and philosophy, in contrast to modern Western buildings that accommodate youth well but become hostile and cold as one ages. Within Chinese history, Wang Shu specifically singles out the Song Dynasty. Dismissing indiscriminate praise for all traditional eras, he notes that pre-Song periods like the Tang retained an alien, medieval, or overly exotic quality. The Song Dynasty, by contrast, achieved an extraordinarily refined, restrained, and surprisingly modern aesthetic consciousness at its very inception, making it the most sophisticated and enduring traditional benchmark for contemporary design.
- **Western Contribution**: Epistemic rupture, intellectual autonomy, and the license to fundamentally rethink all conventional forms.
- **Chinese Contribution**: Embodied rituals, living identity, and an ecological harmony with nature that outlasts steel-and-concrete modernity.
- **Song Dynasty Modernity**: Revered for its high taste, refined character, and timeless minimalist elegance, setting it apart from medieval Tang aesthetics.
[28:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=1707s) Jiangnan Woodcraft and Huizhou: From Silkworm Lofts to the "Rome of China"
The conversation opens with an exploration of how regional lifestyles in Jiangnan dictated distinct architectural forms. Wang Shu explains that Zhejiang’s traditional architecture stands out for its remarkably flexible wooden framing. In sericulture regions, houses were built with two concentric rings of pillars—an inner frame and an outer frame. During silkworm-rearing season, removable wooden door panels were slotted into the outer perimeter, expanding the enclosed indoor living area. Once summer arrived, these panels were dismantled entirely and hung up on the roof beams, causing the interior footprint to shrink while opening up breezy, semi-outdoor sheltered spaces. This dynamic adaptability represents what Wang calls the sheer brilliance of Zhejiang vernacular carpentry.
Southern Anhui (Huizhou) presented a starkly contrasting architectural paradigm. Unlike ordinary agrarian settlements, Huizhou villages grew exceptionally affluent at an early date because their residents were primarily merchants holding state licenses for the lucrative salt trade in Yangzhou. Because arable land in the mountain valleys was scarce, wealthy merchants built vertically, creating dense settlements of multi-story dwellings—an anomaly in contrast to northern China’s strictly single-story residences and southern China's occasional two-story layouts. To guard against catastrophic fires in these tightly packed enclaves, builders erected soaring, thick firewalls topped with dark tiles. The heavy, monolithic enclosure of these towering white plaster walls and black roofs gives Huizhou an ancient, masonry-grounded weight that Wang terms the "Rome of China," directly mirroring the solid, wall-dominated spatial language of classical Italy.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Regional Architectural Adaptations in Jiangnan
accDescr: Comparison between flexible timber framing in Zhejiang and dense masonry walls in Huizhou.
subgraph Zhejiang["Zhejiang: Dynamic Flexibility"]
Z1["Concentric Double-Ring Pillar System"] --> Z2["Spring: Panels Mounted (Expanded Silkworm Space)"]
Z1 --> Z3["Summer: Panels Hung on Beams (Semi-Outdoor Verandas)"]
end
subgraph Huizhou["Huizhou: Dense Merchant Settlements"]
H1["Yangzhou Salt Merchant Wealth"] --> H2["Scarce Mountain Valleys: Multi-Story Density"]
H2 --> H3["Massive Firewalls & Black Tiles ('Rome of China')"]
end
```
[30:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=1817s) Song Dynasty Lineage, the Evolution of Dougong, and Clan Enclaves
Moving south from southern Zhejiang into northern Fujian, Wang Shu points out that much of the vernacular architecture preserves building traditions essentially unchanged since the Song Dynasty. A primary signature of this lineage is the "double-curved" roof, which sweeps gracefully in two distinct directional planes. Local carpentry guilds in these regions faithfully handed down Song construction manuals and floor plans straight through the Qing Dynasty without major disruption, meaning true architectural forms of the Song survive in daily rural use.
The discussion then touches upon *dougong* (interlocking wooden bracket sets), highlighting a profound tectonic turning point in Chinese history. Before and during the Song Dynasty, *dougong* served an essential structural role: timber columns terminated directly into the bracket clusters, which then bore and distributed the roof load. Beginning in the Yuan Dynasty, the structural logic shifted toward pragmatic simplification: columns were extended directly to the roof beams above, reducing exterior *dougong* into decorative ornamentation. Despite these nationwide shifts, Hakka and Minnan builders in Fujian retained their grand "palace-style" Song layouts. Furthermore, along the borderlands of Guangdong and Fujian, this architectural continuity gave rise to monumental collective clan settlements, such as the circular Hakka *tulou*. Housing up to three hundred households under a single roof, these monolithic clan fortresses carried forward communal living practices dating back to the Wei-Jin dynasties, remaining vibrant, unbroken traditions well into the 1960s and 1970s.
- **Double-Curved Roofs**: Roof planes that sweep across two distinct axes, characteristic of Song carpentry traditions preserved across southern Zhejiang and Fujian.
- **Structural Evolution of Dougong**:
- *Pre-Song & Song*: True load-bearing system where columns connect directly into the bracket clusters.
- *Post-Song (Yuan onwards)*: Columns rise straight to beam level; bracket sets become primarily decorative and standardized.
- **Hakka Tulou & Palace-Style Houses**: Minnan and Hakka residences retain imperial Song spatial configurations, while large circular *tulou* house undivided clans of several hundred families under one contiguous roof.
[32:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=1966s) Standardization vs. Nature: The Architect’s Moral Responsibility
The conversation turns to the relentless contemporary drift toward faster, cheaper, and more homogenized construction. Wang Shu diagnoses the fundamental tension of the modern world as a dual struggle: between the natural and the artificial, and between standardization and diversification. While industrial standardization currently dominates global development, rising counter-currents of anti-globalization and ecological awareness mirror an ongoing dialectic of Yin and Yang. Wang reflects that ancient Chinese architectural wisdom—premised on working alongside nature—might ultimately provide the blueprint for overcoming the dead ends of modern urban development.
Invoking Socrates’ adage that "the unexamined life is not worth living," the group discusses the architect's power over human life. When Dou Wentao praises Wang as a pioneer resisting the ubiquitous commercial floor plan of "two bedrooms and one living room," Wang demurs, admitting he feels a deep sense of self-reproach regarding his profession. He questions who gave architects the unearned authority to draw lines on paper that dictate how millions must organize their domestic lives. He recalls that his uncompromising refusal to design generic commercial projects dates back to his earliest days in Hangzhou, when he and his wife slept on a single bamboo mat laid over bare concrete floors. For Wang, that refusal to compromise design integrity for commercial gain has remained unchanged throughout his career.
[35:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=2111s) The Brutal Reality of Architecture and Cornell’s Graduation Divide
The participants discuss the immense gap between architecture as an art form and the harsh realities of professional practice. Dou Wentao and the guests observe that while architects can dramatically shape society, very few ever gain genuine creative autonomy. Most graduates, even those leaving elite programs like Harvard, find themselves trapped at corporate drafting tables, spending endless years drawing utilitarian details like bathrooms.
A guest shares an illustrative anecdote about his daughter studying architecture at Cornell University. Frustrated by the bleak job prospects, she decided to double-major in economics. When her parents attended her graduation ceremony, they noticed a striking demographic contrast: the economics degree line was filled with Asian students seeking practical upward mobility, whereas the architecture line was dominated almost entirely by white students from affluent backgrounds. Confused, the daughter turned to her father and asked, "Dad, are we rich? All the rich kids study architecture—are we rich?" Her father had to frankly tell her that they were not wealthy, and that she would have to work diligently. The guests note that humanity erected more physical building volume in the 20th century than in the previous several thousand years combined, yet this massive explosion in quantity has rarely translated into artistic freedom or humanistic design for individual architects.
[36:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=2218s) An Enduring Partnership: Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu’s Lifelong Craft
In light of the intense commercial pressures of the industry, the group observes that architects of Wang Shu’s standing carry an intellectual burden for the physical countenance of society. Wang explains that this very responsibility is why he and his partner, Lu Wenyu, deliberately chose to anchor their careers in academia and teaching rather than purely commercial development.
The hosts warmly compare Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu to the iconic architectural couple Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin. College sweethearts who studied the same discipline at the same university, the two have worked and lived together since their student days. Dou Wentao playfully notes that Lu was Wang’s first love and only partner, asking how the couple manages their professional division of labor and sustains such an enviable, lifelong creative union in an era when younger generations increasingly struggle with romantic commitment.
[38:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=2288s) The Yin and Yang of Partnership: Translating Concept into Reality
The conversation opens with profound admiration for the enduring partnership between Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, a creative and marital union that has thrived continuously since their university days. Observers marvel at how seamless and complementary their dynamic appears. Lu Wenyu candidly explains the secret to their collaboration: she takes on the responsibilities that Wang Shu dislikes or avoids, which happen to align perfectly with her own strengths and practical acumen.
When asked for a concrete example, Lu Wenyu points to their massive, five-year undertaking: the Fuchun Mountain Museum (incorporating the Gongwang Art Museum). While Wang Shu generated the conceptual core, design language, and underlying architectural philosophy, Lu Wenyu served as the project manager tasked with coordinating a dizzying web of contractors, engineers, and municipal stakeholders. Her daily routine involved defending the architectural vision on-site and negotiating—often arguing fiercely—with construction teams to ensure that the integrity of the design survived the rough reality of the building site.
Wang Shu highlights how drastically their studio's hands-on approach departs from conventional Chinese design institutes. In mainstream commercial practice, design institutes operate on a detached, transactional schedule: after handing over construction blueprints, they rarely visit the job site more than three times—once for blueprint delivery, once for the mid-stage inspection, and once for final sign-off. If unforeseen problems arise, the builders simply alter the drawings or rush the job. For Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, construction supervision is a direct, living extension of design. They refuse to let contractors compromise core design intentions—such as when structural engineers attempt to shove two intrusive pillars into an expansive column-free hall, or when material suppliers claim that specified local timber is impossible to procure. On a complex project like Fuchun Mountain Museum, these high-stakes negotiations happen tens of thousands of times.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Conventional Design Institutes vs. Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu Studio
accDescr: Flowchart contrasting the detached three-visit model of standard design institutes with the integrated craft and on-site negotiation model of Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu.
subgraph Conventional["Conventional Design Institute Model"]
direction TB
C1["Draft Blueprints in Studio"] --> C2["Hand Over Drawings (Trip 1)"]
C2 --> C3["Mid-term Inspection (Trip 2)"]
C3 --> C4["Final Sign-off (Trip 3)"]
C4 --> C5["Result: Compromised Vision & Rush Work"]
end
subgraph Integrated["Wang Shu & Lu Wenyu Integrated Model"]
direction TB
W1["Wang Shu: Concept & Philosophy"] --> W2["Lu Wenyu: Project Direction & Craft"]
W2 --> W3["Continuous On-site Coordination"]
W3 --> W4["Resolving Trade & Material Clashes"]
W4 --> W5["Craftsman Improvisation & Execution"]
end
```
Dou Wentao resonates deeply with this division of labor, drawing a parallel to his own father’s career as a section chief in a factory’s technical process department (*gongyi ke*). His father always stressed that true *gongyi* (craftsmanship or manufacturing process) is not subordinate to blueprint design; rather, it is the wisdom, technique, and problem-solving required to turn paper drawings into a physical, high-quality object.
- **The Fuchun Mountain Museum timeline**: The project spanned nearly five years from conception to completion.
- **The traditional design institute protocol**: Standard institutes limit on-site appearances to three statutory milestones: drawing handover, structural mid-term check, and final project acceptance.
- **On-site design friction**: Over 10,000 instances of material shortages, structural disagreements (e.g., preserving massive column-free spaces versus engineers adding columns), and trade clashes had to be resolved manually by Lu Wenyu.
---
[41:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=2479s) Reclaiming the Craftsman: Beaux-Arts Disconnection and "Eight Houses You Can't Live In"
Wang Shu asserts that the contemporary definition of an architect has become fundamentally distorted. In traditional Chinese architecture, the designer and the master carpenter or mason were inextricably bound; a design had no legitimacy unless the builder could execute it through material knowledge. Conversely, modern Chinese architectural education largely inherited the Western legacy of the 19th-century École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In that academic tradition, architects view themselves exclusively as fine artists, drawing elegant forms from an ivory tower while remaining totally ignorant of materials, joinery, and structural execution.
Dou Wentao compares Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu’s synergy to China's legendary architectural couple, Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin, where drafting genius and nuanced practical refinement existed in close harmony. The hosts also bring up Wang Shu's seminal early conceptual work, the essay and exhibition titled *"Eight Houses You Can't Live In"* (*八座不能居住的房子*).
Wang Shu explains that this project marked the birth of his independent architectural language. The "eight houses" were actually eight handcrafted table lamps with small wooden bases, created as an intimate, romantic gift for Lu Wenyu. In their modest two-bedroom apartment, Wang Shu hung these eight miniature architectural models along the walls. The installation embodied the classical Chinese aesthetic ideal of "seeing the macrocosm within the microcosm" (*xiao zhong jian da* / "seeing the big in the small"), turning everyday living quarters into a contemplative universe of spatial experiments.
---
[42:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=2567s) Against the Monolith: Vernacular Diversity and the "Condor Couple"
Addressing the broader landscape of Chinese urban development, the hosts ask Wang Shu whether the future of Chinese architecture will swing toward a unified neo-national aesthetic or remain trapped in monotonous modern mega-blocks. Wang Shu firmly rejects the notion of imposing any monolithic style. Reflecting on his pedagogical and architectural experiments at the China Academy of Art, he recalls stating his objective to "reconstruct a contemporary Chinese vernacular architecture." When his university dean asked whether he meant reconstructing *all* of Chinese architecture, Wang Shu clarified that he harbored no such totalitarian ambition. His true vision is an open, pluralistic society where many schools of thought contend and "a hundred flowers bloom" (*bai hua qi fang*), just as traditional Jiangnan water towns historically accommodated myriad rooflines, courtyard shapes, and regional variations.
Dou Wentao cites Hong Kong essayist Chan Koon-chung, who wrote that the hallmark of a truly livable urban environment is one where a resident can walk for 20 to 25 minutes from their doorstep and encounter five distinct architectural housing typologies—high-rise apartments, glass-curtain office towers, historical alleyway lane houses (*lilong*), and garden villas. Wang Shu agrees enthusiastically, noting that an overriding rule in his own design philosophy is a profound aversion to sheer bigness:
- **Deconstructing scale**: Whenever Wang Shu is tasked with designing a massive civic project, he deliberately fragments the overall volume into small, permeable, domestic-scaled pavilions and corridors so visitors never feel crushed by an overbearing monument.
- **The value of the humble**: He consciously champions "the weak and the small" (*ruo xiao*) within grand civic landscapes as a counterweight to modern corporate megalomania.
As the formal interview winds down, warm camaraderie ensues. The hosts jokingly refer to Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu as the "Condor Couple" (*Shen Diao Xia Lü*) of the architectural world, an indomitable husband-and-wife duo whose romantic bond and professional mastery make them unstoppable on any construction site. Amid lighthearted banter about swapping phone numbers and taking photos for Lu Wenyu's daughter, Wang Shu reveals his charmingly low-tech lifestyle: he has misplaced his mobile phone and suggests that anyone wishing to reach him should send a handwritten letter instead.
---
[45:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=2748s) The Poetry of Wapan: Demolition Debris and Sunset Guidelines
Moving over to inspect the physical walls of the campus, the group marvels at Wang Shu’s signature *wapan* wall (*wa pan qiang*), a traditional southeastern coastal masonry technique constructed entirely from recycled tiles, discarded domestic ceramics, and broken masonry. Dou Wentao is immediately captivated by the tactile richness and interplay of light across the irregular surfaces.
Wang Shu shares an anecdote about teaching local rural craftsmen how to lay the wildly irregular, sweeping roofs of his complex. The craftsmen, trained in rigid industrial construction, initially struggled to understand how to lay the uneven materials without formal engineering drawings. Wang Shu solved the dilemma not with blueprints, but with poetic intuition: he pointed to the evening sky and instructed the masons, "Just look at the sunset and lay the tiles like that." Because traditional Chinese artisans retain an intuitive cultural relationship with nature, the masons understood the prompt immediately and laid the surface with effortless organic beauty.
Examining the *wapan* facade up close reveals layers of cultural memory embedded directly into the mortar:
- **Demolition salvage**: During China's rapid urban expansion, historic villages were systematically demolished; building suppliers would regularly call Wang Shu offering up to 20 million reclaimed roof tiles from demolition sites.
- **Shaoxing wine jar fragments**: The wall incorporates curved ceramic shards from traditional Shaoxing yellow wine jugs (*jiutan*), their glazed rims catching sunlight and contrasting with grey roof tiles.
- **Improvisational masonry**: While Wang Shu provides detailed preliminary composition drawings designating the density of materials—such as increasing the concentration of ceramic shards toward the upper registers—he deliberately leaves room for the masons on-site to interpret the material flow freely, achieving a living synthesis between architectural intent and folk craftsmanship.
## Notable quotes
> [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=0s) the whole village is full of masters! — Wang Shu
> [06:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=370s) delay the occurrence of major events — Wang Shu
> [20:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=1218s) The one with the sweet osmanthus tree is my home — Wang Shu
> [20:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=1218s) At least I was an idealist once in my life, but I will never be an idealist a second time. — Developer
> [28:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=1707s) Rome of China — Wang Shu
> [32:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=1966s) the unexamined life is not worth living — Socrates
> [35:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=2111s) Dad, are we rich? All the rich kids study architecture—are we rich? — Guest's daughter
> [42:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=2567s) reconstruct a contemporary Chinese vernacular architecture — Wang Shu
> [45:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUJpnz_ZsnQ&t=2748s) Just look at the sunset and lay the tiles like that. — Wang Shu
## Mentioned
Wang Shu, Lu Wenyu, Dou Wentao, Liang Sicheng, Lin Huiyin, Milan Kundera, Martin Heidegger, Roland Barthes, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Stanley Kubrick, Nikita Khrushchev, Chan Koon-chung, Eileen Chang, Chen Xiaoqing, 方大厨, China Academy of Art, Wencun Village, Fuchun Mountain Museum, Gongwang Art Museum, Harvard University, Cornell University, Museum of Modern Art, École des Beaux-Arts, Book of Songs, Little Reunions, Barry Lyndon, In Praise of Shadows, The Tale of Genji, Notes on Garden-Making, Eight Houses You Can't Live In, Wapan, Dougong, Hakka tulou, Gambiered Guangdong silk, 西湖醋鱼, 脆皮大肠, 东坡肉, 宋嫂鱼羹
## Video description
💡订阅我们，换个视角看懂万象：
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwiWVn-hZq3_zuOk570kyGA
[0:00] Wang Shu: the whole village is full of masters!
[6:10] Wang Shu: delay the occurrence of major events
[20:18] Wang Shu: The one with the sweet osmanthus tree is my home
[20:18] Developer: At least I was an idealist once in my life, but I will never be an idealist a second time.
[28:27] Wang Shu: Rome of China
[32:46] Socrates: the unexamined life is not worth living
[35:11] Guest's daughter: Dad, are we rich? All the rich kids study architecture—are we rich?
[42:47] Wang Shu: reconstruct a contemporary Chinese vernacular architecture
[45:48] Wang Shu: Just look at the sunset and lay the tiles like that.
[47:37] 方大厨: 不能乱发财的。
[53:05] 窦文涛: 一半自然，一半人文
Original transcript
[0:00] For instance, I’ve always had this
[0:01] impression of you, that you collect old
[0:03] bricks and tiles from demolished houses
[0:05] across various places—hundreds of
[0:07] thousands of them, right?
[0:08] >> Take this "tile wall" for example,
[0:11] >> Yes,
[0:12] >> Because this isn't a new material; I
[0:14] often say it breathes.
[0:16] >> These kinds of Chinese materials all
[0:17] breathe, don't they? And it bears
[0:19] countless traces of life.
[0:21] >> Traces of life,
[0:22] >> Touched by countless hands; you can
[0:25] directly
[0:26] >> feel it.
[0:27] >> At that time, buildings were being
[0:29] demolished everywhere, and I said to
[0:31] myself that as a contemporary
[0:33] intellectual and a contemporary Chinese
[0:36] architect, if I didn't respond to this
[0:38] —if I didn't make the expression I
[0:41] was supposed to make—that would be
[0:43] wrong. So that’s what I wanted to do;
[0:46] I said this situation had to have an
[0:48] answer.
[0:49] >> Of course, there were other reasons too
[0:52] . When we were building this campus,
[0:53] the school had no money; they had to
[0:55] take out bank loans. The budget they
[0:57] gave me was less than half of the
[0:59] standard cost, yet they required
[1:01] world-class quality—that was the
[1:03] school’s requirement. Then I
[1:05] discovered that these materials on the
[1:07] market were about a third or a quarter
[1:09] of the price, because back then, people
[1:11] just considered these things trash to
[1:13] be thrown away. Of course, the third
[1:15] reason was that while I was doing
[1:17] research in Ningbo, I discovered this
[1:18] kind of "tile wall." When I looked at
[1:20] it, I said, "The whole village is full
[1:22] of masters!" It’s like every wall you
[1:25] see—you feel it must have been an
[1:27] artist of master-level caliber to
[1:28] organize such a diverse variety of
[1:30] things into a single wall. I once
[1:32] measured four square meters and found
[1:34] 84 different sizes of materials in it.
[1:37] >> My goodness.
[1:38] >> Do you know what kind of technique that
[1:40] is?
[1:40] >> It’s because Ningbo is a
[1:42] typhoon-prone area. So, whenever a
[1:44] typhoon hit back then, their houses
[1:46] would be blown down. After they were
[1:49] blown down, the common people used
[1:50] their wisdom to rebuild as quickly as
[1:52] possible using whatever materials were
[1:54] at hand. So, through repeated
[1:56] blow-downs and repeated reconstructions
[1:58] , all these different materials got
[2:01] mixed together. What emerged is
[2:02] something that, in fact, is not much
[2:04] different from what Professor Wang said
[2:07] about that era when we were tearing
[2:09] everything down everywhere.
[2:10] >> It’s really no different from the
[2:12] typhoon because, in both cases,
[2:14] there’s no sorting of the materials.
[2:16] Whatever you recover is what you use,
[2:19] so you have to recombine all these
[2:21] recovered materials and use our new
[2:23] craftsmanship to build them back up;
[2:26] there is beauty in that, and other
[2:28] things too.
[2:28] >> Exactly, the key is the concept.
[2:31] >> This thing, well, in today's more
[2:33] sophisticated terms
[2:34] >> it’s called sustainability,
[2:36] >> sustainable development, yes,
[2:38] >> but in old Chinese wisdom, it’s just
[2:40] not wasting things.
[2:41] >> Right. This is sustainability; the
[2:43] first rule is not to waste. These tile
[2:46] fragments, or "pan," are smaller pieces
[2:48] than a standard whole tile. They’re
[2:50] called "pan."
[2:51] >> A whole tile is like this,
[2:54] >> but since they break during demolition,
[2:57] the pieces can still be used. We use
[3:01] all these broken tiles when we build
[3:03] the walls. Generally speaking, the size
[3:06] used is about a quarter of a tile,
[3:08] >> around a quarter,
[3:10] >> after building, isn't there a lot left
[3:12] on the ground?
[3:12] >> Small debris like this.
[3:14] >> Small debris,
[3:15] >> The wall is built on both sides, and we
[3:17] sweep this into the middle to fill it.
[3:19] It ensures that after construction, the
[3:21] ground is clean, not a speck of dust
[3:23] left.
[3:23] >> Mm-hmm,
[3:24] >> It looks like a work of art, and it
[3:26] saves money.
[3:27] >> But in the end, it’s still art. You
[3:30] might say that, and though I don’t
[3:33] know architecture, I recall that
[3:35] ancient Chinese craftsmen had a saying,
[3:37] they talked about "form following
[3:39] function." Mm.
[3:41] >> I don’t know if this is some
[3:43] functionalist school or what, but I
[3:45] personally find it very comfortable. It
[3:48] means that every detail of the object
[3:50] you make has a practical value, yet it
[3:53] is also remarkably beautiful. Liang
[3:56] Sicheng once wrote in a book that the
[3:58] beauty of Chinese architecture, this "
[4:01] form following function," is shown in
[4:03] exposed structures.
[4:04] >> Mm.
[4:05] >> Take the dougong brackets, for example.
[4:08] >> Right.
[4:09] >> The dougong looks so beautiful, it
[4:11] seems purely decorative, nothing more.
[4:14] >> But it is precisely what supports the
[4:16] massive roof, allowing it to extend
[4:19] further, and it actually bears and
[4:21] distributes the weight of the pillars.
[4:24] >> Weight. In modern buildings, these
[4:27] supports are hidden inside the walls,
[4:28] whereas in Chinese architecture, the
[4:30] internal structure is...
[4:32] >> Yes.
[4:33] >> It’s even like how you carry yourself
[4:35] .
[4:35] >> Mm.
[4:36] >> Consistent inside and out, right? What
[4:38] it is inside is what it is outside, yet
[4:40] it's still beautiful.
[4:41] >> Yes, this is a core part of Chinese
[4:43] aesthetics. Let’s slowly look at your
[4:46] "socialist countryside."
[4:47] >> Let me briefly talk about the Wencun
[4:49] village project I led.
[4:51] >> Mm.
[4:52] >> Usually, when choosing a village site,
[4:53] the Chinese tradition is to face south
[4:55] with one's back to the north,
[4:57] >> it has an orientation,
[4:58] >> but this village is the exact opposite.
[5:01] >> It doesn't face the sun?
[5:02] >> Right, it’s completely flipped. So,
[5:04] this is an explanation provided by Mr.
[5:06] Wang, which I find quite interesting.
[5:07] You should tell it yourself.
[5:09] >> I actually think there are two
[5:10] explanations. One explanation is very
[5:12] practical. A rural farmer said
[5:14] something that I understood the moment
[5:16] I heard it: he said they wouldn't even
[5:18] plant trees along the southern edge of
[5:20] their fields. Mm.
[5:22] >> I understood right away, because once
[5:24] you plant trees, they cast a shadow.
[5:26] >> The crops wouldn't grow well. The whole
[5:28] village, in order to ensure a good
[5:29] harvest, chose to live in the shadow of
[5:31] the mountain, because their location
[5:33] was by a mountain, they lived by the
[5:34] mountainside.
[5:35] >> Facing north-south, the entire village
[5:37] was in the mountain's shadow.
[5:39] >> Right? The living conditions were
[5:41] actually worse, but cultivating the
[5:43] fields was more important. They would
[5:45] rather endure poorer living conditions,
[5:47] as long as the best sunlight and land
[5:49] were given to the crops.
[5:51] >> Of course, Chinese stories usually have
[5:53] a second version. It says that during
[5:55] the Southern Song Dynasty, a general's
[5:57] descendant looked north toward the
[5:59] Central Plains.
[6:00] >> That's a legend.
[6:02] >> I think the first one is more profound.
[6:05] The second one is more ideological,
[6:07] about reclaiming lost territory.
[6:10] >> A legend. So why is it that, north or
[6:12] south, there must be a courtyard for it
[6:14] to be considered a Chinese way of life?
[6:16] >> Take the family I mentioned, they were
[6:18] said to be landlords. I studied their
[6:20] house carefully; once you enter the
[6:22] courtyard, the depth of the house is
[6:24] actually very shallow. The entire depth
[6:26] of the house is probably only about 6
[6:28] meters; it's a wide house, long from
[6:30] east to west and shallow from north to
[6:33] south.
[6:33] >> Mm.
[6:35] >> With such a shallow layout, once you
[6:37] open the door, you find a large screen;
[6:40] the configuration is such that the "
[6:42] Eight Immortals" table is almost
[6:44] touching the door—as soon as you open
[6:46] it, there's the table, right in the
[6:48] middle.
[6:50] >> That's the table, and the old couple
[6:52] sits there.
[6:53] >> Because, for example, if your child
[6:54] passes the imperial examination,
[6:56] >> Right.
[6:57] >> The messenger bringing the good news
[6:58] comes in, and as soon as the door opens
[6:59] , I need this layout to have space.
[7:00] >> Right? To receive the good news.
[7:03] >> Exactly, and after that, if someone in
[7:04] the family is getting married,
[7:06] >> They come in to bow to their elders.
[7:08] >> This layout must exist; you can't just
[7:10] enter the house immediately, you must
[7:11] first enter the courtyard gate. If you
[7:13] read the*Book of Songs*, it’s very
[7:15] clear: first enter the courtyard gate,
[7:17] come upon a spirit wall; the space
[7:19] between the gate and the wall has a
[7:21] special name, what you do there, how
[7:22] you bypass the wall—this whole
[7:24] sequence must exist. This is the
[7:26] meaning in life.
[7:27] >> I need it to have meaning, right?
[7:29] >> Yes, it has meaning. You can't just let
[7:31] people walk right into the main hall
[7:32] the moment you open the door.
[7:33] >> This is what the mother in*Little
[7:35] Reunions*taught the protagonist about
[7:36] the way of a virtuous wife.
[7:37] >> Right, this is called etiquette, isn't
[7:39] it?
[7:39] >> Yes, yes.
[7:41] >> That’s why there has to be this
[7:43] courtyard.
[7:43] >> Exactly, it needs to have layers.
[7:46] Ritual must have layers.
[7:47] >> Oh, so it’s related to ritual.
[7:50] >> Yes, what is ritual? I think the most
[7:53] classic definition of ritual is that
[7:55] it’s meant to delay the occurrence of
[7:57] major events.
[7:57] >> How do you interpret that?
[7:59] >> It means you can’t just let things be
[8:01] exposed all at once.
[8:02] >> There must be a process.
[8:03] >> There must be a process to delay the
[8:05] moment of revelation.
[8:06] >> Right, and falling in love requires
[8:08] this too.
[8:09] >> It needs to be savored.
[8:10] >> That’s interesting, and it’s the
[8:11] same for architecture.
[8:12] >> Exactly.
[8:13] >> Take today at that palace memorial, for
[8:15] instance. You climb one hill after
[8:17] another; if you could just step right
[8:20] to the top,
[8:20] >> that wouldn’t be a journey.
[8:22] >> Right, it wouldn't be climbing a
[8:24] mountain.
[8:24] >> Exactly. So, should it make people
[8:27] extend the distance? Should it make
[8:30] people slow down time? Is this a
[8:32] concept that modern architecture should
[8:34] have?
[8:34] >> This is Chinese architecture, Chinese
[8:37] culture—it gives you time and a
[8:39] process to experience things. Nowadays,
[8:42] it’s the complete opposite. Milan
[8:45] Kundera once said something about what
[8:47] "modern" is, and it’s very vivid. He
[8:50] said if you watch a woman
[8:52] >> walk straight into a public restroom in
[8:55] front of everyone, that is "modern."
[8:57] >> She doesn’t hide what she’s doing
[9:00] or go in discreetly; she just goes
[9:02] straight in, and the restroom is made
[9:04] of transparent glass.
[9:06] >> Hmm.
[9:07] >> He says this is "modern." Professor
[9:10] Wang, I’d like to ask you something.
[9:13] I really want to ask, because I’m
[9:14] practically half-graduated from the
[9:16] Fine Arts Academy myself. Although I
[9:18] was on the Nanshan campus, many of our
[9:19] electives and activities were actually
[9:21] held at Xiangshan, so I’m half a user
[9:23] . I’d like to boldly ask Professor
[9:25] Wang about practicality. For example,
[9:27] if the walking time is longer, and the
[9:30] distance to the classroom is greater,
[9:32] it might not be as easy to find the
[9:34] classroom. Also, including your highly
[9:38] stylized roofs and building structures,
[9:40] does this have any impact on the
[9:42] building’s utility or the lighting
[9:44] and ventilation of the classrooms? You
[9:47] put that very tactfully: Will people
[9:49] get lost trying to find the classroom?
[9:51] How is the lighting and the space?
[9:53] >> You’ve asked this question quite a
[9:55] few times now.
[9:56] >> I just want to ask for your perspective
[9:58] as an artist.
[9:59] >> He’s saying that it’s very...
[10:01] >> Because I’ve been late quite a few
[10:03] times.
[10:03] >> Attending class here. He says it looks
[10:05] especially beautiful, we agree it looks
[10:07] great, but sometimes it’s hard to
[10:08] find the classroom and you end up late
[10:10] —is that a real issue?
[10:11] >> If you can't find your classroom, you
[10:13] can't blame the architect; that's an
[10:15] issue with poor signage.
[10:17] >> How should I put this? There was a
[10:19] turning point when I was working on the
[10:21] Xiangshan Campus, as I was struggling
[10:23] with the design one day. I ended up
[10:25] watching TV that evening. A documentary
[10:27] happened to be playing. This
[10:29] documentary was about a small town in
[10:32] northern Morocco where many hippies
[10:34] lived in the 1950s. Two things they
[10:37] said left a deep impression on me: the
[10:40] first was that no one knew how long
[10:42] this small town had actually existed.
[10:44] Oh, I told myself, I had to remember
[10:47] this—it's about temporality. Our
[10:49] modern buildings lack this sense of
[10:50] time; they feel like products fresh off
[10:52] the assembly line. Yet, anything with
[10:55] real charm must possess a sense of
[10:57] temporality. The second point was that
[11:00] there were about a thousand small
[11:02] alleys in this town, and every outsider
[11:04] would get lost. But the people who
[11:07] lived there, those who had resided
[11:09] there for years, never would. They
[11:12] could navigate by noting a missing
[11:14] brick or an extra stone at a corner,
[11:16] tracking everything clearly.
[11:18] >> The long-time residents certainly
[11:19] wouldn't get lost.
[11:20] >> Exactly. This made me think of a third
[11:23] issue. In recent years, real estate
[11:25] developers have loved to bring up
[11:27] Heidegger, quoting him about "
[11:29] poetically dwelling." Dwelling.
[11:32] >> But no one has really studied the fact
[11:34] that Heidegger’s statement has a
[11:36] prerequisite. What is that prerequisite
[11:38] ? It is called settling down.
[11:40] >> Settling down first.
[11:42] >> Right, you must settle in a place; only
[11:44] with this state of "settledness" can "
[11:45] poetic dwelling" occur. If we live like
[11:48] we do in the city now, buying a house
[11:50] here today and moving to another place
[11:52] tomorrow, you are basically a migrant.
[11:54] Migrants can never experience the
[11:56] concept of "poetic dwelling." So, this
[11:59] brings me to my third question: how can
[12:02] we foster a sense of "settledness" like
[12:04] that? Even when the project I am
[12:07] designing is a campus.
[12:09] >> Those were the three questions I was
[12:11] contemplating at the time. Of course,
[12:14] this might create trouble for you
[12:16] students because of these
[12:17] unconventional requirements. You know,
[12:20] the most troublesome instance was with
[12:22] a teacher—actually, one of our staff
[12:24] members. He said, "Teacher, teacher, I
[12:27] ran into a problem, right?" It was in
[12:29] one of our buildings with a zigzag
[12:31] design. I saw this teacher standing
[12:33] dazed on the second floor, looking
[12:35] around, and I asked, "What are you
[12:37] doing?" He replied, "I'm...I'm trying
[12:39] to get out. I want to get out of this
[12:42] building." Professor Luo went to other
[12:43] offices to take care of business, and
[12:45] half an hour later when he returned, he
[12:47] found him still there.
[12:48] >> That's happened to me too.
[12:49] >> He settled down, he really settled in.
[12:51] >> He said, "I can't find the way out."
[12:54] What does that actually mean? This
[12:56] building has eight exits. He wanted to
[12:59] find the most convenient exit to get
[13:01] somewhere else, but he just couldn't
[13:03] find it.
[13:03] >> That’s basically what happened.
[13:05] >> Yes.
[13:06] >> So he was trapped there.
[13:08] >> Is that your goal?
[13:09] >> How should I put it regarding
[13:10] architecture?
[13:11] >> Once you're here, don't think about
[13:13] leaving.
[13:13] >> I hope to let everyone gradually have a
[13:16] sense of intrigue. I especially like
[13:18] the French writer Roland Barthes; he
[13:20] said that kind of writing is the best
[13:23] feeling. He said it's like a person
[13:26] standing at a crossroads, unable to
[13:29] decide where to go, hesitating there—
[13:32] being acutely aware of this feeling is
[13:35] the best. This—this is something I
[13:38] also try to incorporate into my
[13:40] architecture; I really like this
[13:42] feeling. As for the light...
[13:44] >> Mm.
[13:45] >> Traditional Chinese architecture has a
[13:46] common characteristic: the interior is
[13:48] relatively dark.
[13:49] >> Darkness.
[13:50] >> The courtyard is relatively bright.
[13:51] >> Mm.
[13:52] >> Yes.
[13:53] >> Right, people sit in a space that is
[13:55] relatively dark and quiet, quietly
[13:57] watching the light in the courtyard.
[13:59] This is a very typical Chinese posture.
[14:02] >> Mm.
[14:03] >> So I often think about how in today's
[14:05] movies and TV dramas, some set in
[14:07] ancient times have a sense of
[14:09] unrealistic lighting. Because that
[14:12] light, at most, comes from the door, a
[14:15] bit of sunlight scattered on the floor
[14:17] in front, so the visual experience of
[14:20] ancient people in their homes must have
[14:22] been different from ours.
[14:24] >> Very different. Think about it, you
[14:27] might be in the shadows. Kubrick made a
[14:30] film called "Barry Lyndon," and he
[14:32] insisted on using candlelight because
[14:34] he wanted to capture the European
[14:36] aristocracy in castles, using that
[14:39] specific candlelight to create a sense
[14:41] of atmosphere between people.
[14:43] >> In fact, in Western modern architecture
[14:45] at the turn of the last century, there
[14:46] was a fierce debate between two schools
[14:48] of thought regarding how bright a room
[14:50] should be and how large the windows
[14:51] should be.
[14:52] >> They didn't like it bright?
[14:54] >> One school insisted it shouldn't be too
[14:56] bright, because this complex, poetic
[14:58] feeling would be lost. The school that
[15:00] preferred less light argued that if
[15:02] it's all bright, every building you
[15:04] construct ends up looking like a
[15:05] hospital; only hospitals are designed
[15:07] with that kind of...
[15:08] >> Shadowless light.
[15:10] >> Right? We shouldn't have to live in a
[15:12] hospital from morning till night. So,
[15:14] there is a Japanese author who wrote a
[15:16] book about black.
[15:16] >> In'ei Raisan (In Praise of Shadows).
[15:18] Yes, he said that Japan was actually
[15:20] heavily influenced by China, so houses
[15:23] were very dark.
[15:23] >> And what did that lead to? It meant
[15:26] that when you were talking, you
[15:27] couldn't clearly see the other person's
[15:29] face.
[15:29] >> It was so dark that for a period,
[15:31] Japanese women popularized a makeup
[15:34] style where they painted their teeth
[15:36] very white with a special dye, so that
[15:39] with even a little light, you would see
[15:41] those white teeth—it was terrifying.
[15:44] Yes, yes, yes. He's saying that Japan
[15:47] indeed has an aesthetic of shadows, and
[15:49] it’s also very nostalgic; for
[15:50] instance, in The Tale of Genji, many
[15:52] scenes involve being separated by a
[15:54] layer, like a folding screen, right?
[15:56] When these men and women were having an
[15:58] affair and talking, he said you have to
[16:00] realize they couldn't see each other
[16:01] clearly; their features were blurred.
[16:03] Even some photos taken by Japanese
[16:05] people now, photos of artworks,
[16:07] specifically focus on black, as
[16:09] everything they capture is about the
[16:12] layers within the darkness.
[16:14] >> There is a highly sophisticated
[16:15] aesthetic concept in Chinese tradition,
[16:17] which everyone knows as "ink divided
[16:19] into five colors."
[16:20] >> Right.
[16:21] >> What is "ink in five colors"? It’s
[16:23] that black is actually the color with
[16:24] the richest variety. If you look
[16:26] closely at that black.
[16:27] >> There are all kinds of different blacks
[16:29] .
[16:29] >> Black contains everything within it.
[16:31] >> Black contains everything, and this
[16:33] approach is reflected in concrete
[16:34] practice; for example, the garment
[16:35] Professor Lu is wearing isn't called
[16:37] black, Chinese people call this color "
[16:39] xuan"(profound black).
[16:40] >> Xuan color, hmm.
[16:41] >> So, what colors does this xuan color
[16:43] actually contain inside? All the colors
[16:45] of its buttons.
[16:46] >> Are all the colors of its reverse side.
[16:47] >> Sometimes the back of this piece of
[16:48] clothing is this color.
[16:49] >> This color.
[16:50] >> So xuan means there is red inside the
[16:52] black, is that it?
[16:53] >> All kinds.
[16:54] >> There’s red, blue, green, and purple.
[16:56] >> This color, and this color.
[16:57] >> There are dozens of types of xuan;
[16:59] it’s the mystery of mysteries.
[17:00] >> It’s just that the reverse side of
[17:01] this is all this.
[17:02] >> Every one of your buttons has a
[17:03] different color.
[17:04] >> Yes, because the reverse side is all
[17:06] this. In reality, when you flip it over
[17:07] , it's just this different thing.
[17:09] >> Is this some kind of gauze?
[17:10] >> Gambiered Guangdong silk.
[17:12] >> This is gambiered Guangdong silk.
[17:13] >> Yes, yes, this material has existed
[17:15] since the Song Dynasty.
[17:16] >> Oh my.
[17:17] >> So, for example, period dramas, current
[17:19] TV shows often get it wrong, saying the
[17:21] emperor wore yellow clothes all day
[17:22] long. In reality, the Qing Dynasty
[17:24] emperor's regular attire was actually
[17:25] xuan color.
[17:26] >> Xuan color.
[17:27] >> But there are dozens of types of xuan
[17:29] color. Today he wears a red-tinted xuan
[17:31] , tomorrow a purple-tinted xuan, the
[17:33] day after a different xuan; he could
[17:35] swap them. But they are all xuan color.
[17:38] >> So, Professor Wang, this aesthetic is
[17:41] already quite profound.
[17:42] >> But you handle it so well.
[17:45] >> No, I'm not...I'm genuinely expressing
[17:47] my feelings. No, I, I really feel it's
[17:50] reached such a high level.
[17:52] >> Hmm. Is it possible that there are few
[17:55] who truly understand, like the "broken
[17:57] strings no one hears"? But architecture
[18:00] is meant for living. I feel that many
[18:02] current architectural designs, such as
[18:05] the many exhibition halls emerging
[18:07] today, provide designers room to
[18:09] express themselves, right? Because
[18:11] their purpose is exhibition, so
[18:13] designing them like works of art is
[18:15] fine.
[18:15] >> But when it comes to projects with
[18:17] practical functions, do you encounter
[18:19] contradictions?
[18:20] >> I have actually pondered these
[18:21] questions for a very long time.
[18:23] >> A long time. I feel my real
[18:26] breakthrough in thinking came in the
[18:28] late 90s. There's a little article I
[18:30] wrote that is quite famous in our
[18:32] circle. It's called "Garden-Making
[18:34] Technique." In this article, I talked
[18:36] about the first apartment unit assigned
[18:38] to me by my workplace, a
[18:39] two-bedroom-one-living-room layout. I
[18:41] transformed it into what I called a
[18:43] garden. Yes, just a regular apartment.
[18:47] So, what did that mean? It meant that I
[18:50] firmly refused to accept it. I asked,
[18:52] by what right must I live in this
[18:54] two-bedroom-one-living-room layout you
[18:56] arranged for me? Right? Two bedrooms,
[18:58] one living room, three bedrooms, one
[19:00] living room—various layouts. Who has
[19:02] the authority to dictate my life this
[19:04] way? So I wanted to subvert this whole
[19:07] thing. My daughter studied architecture
[19:09] at Harvard, and when she was working on
[19:11] her thesis, she asked for my advice. I
[19:14] gave her a suggestion, but she never
[19:16] finished it. I asked, "Can you design a
[19:19] type of house, say, 100 square meters?"
[19:22] "
[19:22] >> But this 100-square-meter space could
[19:24] become two bedrooms and a living room."
[19:26] "It could become one living room.""
[19:29] >> It could become a loft, or a studio."
[19:32] >> Yes, why not?
[19:33] >> Why shouldn't it be possible? That’s
[19:35] what I asked her.
[19:36] >> Hmm.
[19:38] >> She couldn't design it. I said, "Hong
[19:41] Kong has so many developers with so
[19:44] much money.""Why don't they build a
[19:46] residential tower where the internal
[19:49] partitions are adjustable? For example,
[19:51] with the press of a button, it becomes
[19:54] a two-bedroom-one-living-room unit.
[19:56] Normally, when I'm home alone, it's
[19:58] fine even if it's mostly a balcony.
[20:00] When guests arrive, I press a button
[20:02] and an extra room appears." Why hasn't
[20:05] this happened? I haven't seen a single
[20:08] attempt like this in the entire
[20:10] commercial real estate market.
[20:11] >> His daughter is a fan of yours. Right,
[20:15] right. I want to take a photo with you
[20:17] later.
[20:18] >> Actually, we have done collective
[20:20] housing.
[20:21] >> In Hangzhou, people might not know that
[20:23] the six high-rise residential buildings
[20:25] you designed are all 100 meters tall.
[20:27] >> Yes, yes.
[20:28] >> Six 100-meter-tall residential
[20:30] buildings.
[20:31] >> Meaning a total of 800 households. I
[20:33] want every household to enjoy a
[20:35] courtyard. How do I achieve this in the
[20:38] air? Every household should feel like
[20:41] they are living in a two-story house,
[20:43] not a 100-meter-tall tower. I want
[20:45] every household to be able to point at
[20:47] the courtyard downstairs and say, "The
[20:49] one with the sweet osmanthus tree is my
[20:51] home." And the one next door with a
[20:54] tree is your home.
[20:55] >> Then why haven't those major real
[20:57] estate developers built houses like
[20:59] this? Even if you sold them at a higher
[21:01] price, people would be willing to buy.
[21:03] It’s too troublesome. They want to
[21:05] sell in bulk, they shape your mindset,
[21:07] and once they get you on that track,
[21:09] it’s easier for them to sell.
[21:10] Building it the way I do creates
[21:12] uncertainty and diversity; from a
[21:14] business perspective, that is actually
[21:16] very difficult. Right, the buyers would
[21:19] be willing, but the sellers aren't.
[21:22] Real estate developers have an
[21:24] input-output issue; they want the
[21:27] highest profit in the shortest time, so
[21:29] building as fast as possible is best.
[21:33] >> Because he wants every home to have a
[21:35] courtyard, and he also added some
[21:37] changes to the building's shape.
[21:40] >> So, for every floor during construction
[21:42] , they need formwork, and the formwork
[21:45] for each floor cannot be reused. They
[21:48] have to build a new set of molds for
[21:50] every floor, and the scaffolding and
[21:52] formwork aren't as simple as in
[21:54] standard buildings. If I build from the
[21:58] first floor to the 30th floor, 100
[22:00] meters up, and every floor is identical
[22:02] , they use what's called a slipform
[22:05] system. What is a slipform system? It
[22:08] means in one week, because the mold is
[22:10] built for this floor, once I finish it,
[22:13] next week the mold just slides up to
[22:15] build the second floor, then slides up
[22:18] again. This requires that the building
[22:20] cannot have protruding shapes and must
[22:22] be uniform from bottom to top.
[22:24] >> Why is everyone’s building uniform
[22:25] from bottom to top?
[22:26] >> Why is everything built the same?
[22:28] >> If a design has even slight variations,
[22:30] I have to make a new mold for every
[22:32] floor, dismantle it, and build a new
[22:33] one. Just imagine, it's 30 times the
[22:35] workload.
[22:36] >> So for that developer, it costs 1,000
[22:38] yuan more per square meter than others.
[22:40] >> Right, and then the area—because of
[22:42] the courtyards, the total floor area is
[22:44] reduced.
[22:44] >> Add those two things together. He felt
[22:47] it was very...
[22:48] >> So after he finished, even though it
[22:50] sold very well, he still said, "At
[22:52] least I was an idealist once in my life
[22:55] , but I will never be an idealist a
[22:57] second time." Where you live, why is it
[23:00] a two-bedroom, one-living room layout?
[23:02] Why is there a bathroom? Aren't these
[23:05] set in stone?
[23:06] >> Right? Yes. Then I remember once I went
[23:09] to the MoMA museum, and I realized this
[23:12] issue. I also saw a photo, Khrushchev
[23:14] visiting—I forget which U.S.
[23:16] president it was at the time—in the
[23:19] photo, you see the museum exhibit is a
[23:22] big refrigerator. A kitchen, an open
[23:24] counter, and the U.S. president is
[23:27] telling Khrushchev, "Look.""
[23:29] >> This is what life should be like.""Look
[23:31] , this is the American way of life."
[23:34] >> So, why are we following the Western
[23:36] model? Who decided on this apartment
[23:38] building pattern, right? 100 years ago,
[23:40] Chinese people didn't live in places
[23:42] like this, and neither did the Japanese
[23:44] . Oh, that's when you start to realize
[23:46] it's not a natural default; it's
[23:48] Western-style modernization. We should
[23:50] pursue Chinese-style modernization.
[23:53] >> That's a great summary.
[23:55] >> A highly insightful summary.
[23:58] >> For example, most of us now live in
[24:00] apartment buildings in cities. Do you
[24:04] think there are any problems with the
[24:06] way most of us live? Or is there
[24:08] anything that needs improvement?
[24:11] >> Basically, our lives right now are just
[24:14] lived within a template. It's not just
[24:17] the design that's "identical," your
[24:19] lifestyle itself is in a template.
[24:22] Actually, houses could reasonably
[24:24] create conditions for people to connect
[24:26] . Like I mentioned, the high-rise I
[24:29] designed, I calculated it so every six
[24:31] or seven households get a small
[24:33] courtyard, two stories high, because
[24:35] two stories is at least 6 meters tall,
[24:38] enough to plant a tree of this size.
[24:40] >> But very few people plant them. Of
[24:43] course, that's saying it after the fact
[24:45] . That's a very irresponsible statement
[24:48] . Actually, after we finished it, we
[24:50] had internal debates with the owners,
[24:52] including us discussing it, arguing
[24:54] about who should plant them. One side
[24:56] thought the residents should plant them
[24:58] themselves. The other side thought we
[25:00] should just have the property
[25:01] management handle it. There were two
[25:03] approaches. So later, thinking it would
[25:06] be quick and effective, we decided to
[25:08] let property management do it uniformly
[25:10] . Later we found that the property
[25:12] management's planting was very crude,
[25:14] messy, and the maintenance was very
[25:16] poor. The plants died very quickly, so
[25:18] the concept soon faced failure. I was
[25:20] very disappointed at the time; who
[25:22] could have known if this social
[25:24] experiment would succeed or not.
[25:25] >> But I persisted.
[25:27] >> I won an award in 2012. I went back for
[25:30] a follow-up visit.
[25:31] >> I took the elevator up, entered the
[25:33] courtyard, and it was empty.
[25:34] >> Nothing there at all.
[25:35] >> The tree had died too; I was very
[25:37] disappointed. He just goes up a few
[25:39] floors and enters another courtyard.
[25:41] Wow, it's practically a botanical
[25:44] garden.
[25:45] >> A little kid is doing homework at a
[25:47] small table under the plants. I
[25:50] realized that when residents aren't
[25:52] satisfied, they start doing things
[25:54] themselves; that's how it happens. As
[25:56] an architect, you first have to create
[25:59] the conditions. It doesn't mean
[26:02] everyone will follow your lead—it
[26:04] might not happen—but if you don't set
[26:06] those conditions, it certainly won't.
[26:09] >> What do you think Western architecture
[26:12] has given you? What has traditional
[26:14] Chinese architecture given you?
[26:16] >> Uh, for the West, I think it's actually
[26:17] a form of intellectual awakening and
[26:19] liberation. That has influenced me the
[26:21] most. The core essence of modernity is,
[26:24] in fact, intellectual awakening. And
[26:26] liberation. It means you don't just
[26:29] blindly follow habits; rather, we've
[26:32] entered a state where I can rethink
[26:34] everything.
[26:35] >> Hmm.
[26:36] >> It can be this way, or it doesn't have
[26:38] to be.
[26:39] >> Re-evaluating all values. This, I think
[26:42] , is the most important thing it gave
[26:45] me. But for Chinese tradition, what it
[26:49] gave me is actually a lifestyle and a
[26:51] sense of identity. More importantly, I
[26:56] think this system of ours, which is
[26:58] closer to nature, has more potential in
[27:01] the future. While this Western modern
[27:04] stuff, with its steel and concrete,
[27:07] won't. This is why I pour so much
[27:09] effort into Chinese tradition—because
[27:12] it has a future.
[27:14] >> So, the reason our architecture took
[27:17] this form isn't just about nature. As
[27:19] you just said, it's actually related to
[27:22] philosophy, ideology, and rituals.
[27:25] >> It's related to everything.
[27:27] >> It's also very much related to the body
[27:29] , for Chinese people.
[27:30] >> Western modern architecture is usually
[27:32] fine when you're young. But when you
[27:35] reach a certain age, you find it's not
[27:37] very friendly to people.
[27:39] >> You are very fond of the aesthetics of
[27:41] the Song Dynasty.
[27:43] >> Yes, because it really has high
[27:45] character and high taste. I don't
[27:47] subscribe to the view that everything
[27:49] about Chinese culture is good.
[27:51] >> Many things from the Song Dynasty are
[27:53] almost modern. In Chinese history,
[27:55] before the Song is medieval history; if
[27:57] you look at Tang Dynasty things,
[27:59] there's a big gap in our understanding,
[28:01] right?
[28:02] >> Hmm, it feels a bit international; that
[28:04] kind of thing is even stranger.
[28:06] >> It’s actually the Song Dynasty, and
[28:08] it reached the highest level right from
[28:09] the start.
[28:10] >> So if we want to learn and inherit
[28:12] today, of course all traditions are
[28:14] worth preserving, but you should still
[28:16] pursue the most sophisticated things. I
[28:19] believe the Song Dynasty is the most
[28:21] sophisticated part of our tradition
[28:23] that we can truly experience.
[28:25] >> Could you tell us about the
[28:27] characteristics of Jiangnan residences
[28:29] or their way of life?
[28:31] >> Speaking broadly, for example, the most
[28:33] distinctive feature of Zhejiang might
[28:36] actually be a flexible wooden frame
[28:38] structure; for instance, in many places
[28:41] , they raise silkworms.
[28:42] >> Right.
[28:43] >> This wooden structure consists of two
[28:45] rings of pillars, an inner and an outer
[28:47] one.
[28:47] >> Mm-hmm.
[28:48] >> When it's time to start raising
[28:49] silkworms, they use flexible door
[28:51] panels on the outer ring of the
[28:52] building. When they install these
[28:54] panels, the house expands. In summer,
[28:57] they take all the panels down and hang
[28:59] them on the roof beams; the house
[29:00] shrinks, but it gains many semi-outdoor
[29:02] spaces like this one.
[29:04] >> Oh, I see.
[29:05] >> It is a system with such remarkable
[29:07] flexibility, which is the most
[29:09] brilliant aspect of Zhejiang's
[29:10] architecture. Now, take southern Anhui,
[29:12] or what we call Huizhou, it's different
[29:15] . Huizhou was an area where entire
[29:17] villages became wealthy early on. Truly
[29:19] , there were almost no poor people in
[29:21] any of those villages. Why? Because
[29:24] their main occupation wasn't farming;
[29:26] they were merchants. They held state
[29:28] licenses to trade salt in the Yangzhou
[29:30] area, so when you look at those
[29:31] villages, they are filled with
[29:33] multi-story houses. You see, in
[29:34] Northern China, buildings are basically
[29:36] single-story, and in the South, second
[29:38] floors only appear sporadically, but
[29:40] Huizhou is different—it's all
[29:41] multi-story houses. Because they are
[29:43] multi-story and the villages in the
[29:45] mountains are small, the density is
[29:47] very high. Thus, they have these
[29:49] massive firewalls—we call them
[29:50] firewalls—so that in case of fire, it
[29:52] wouldn't spread to the neighbors. They
[29:54] enclosed them with thick walls and
[29:56] black tiles.
[29:56] >> Quite obvious.
[29:58] >> This very solid, substantial feeling is
[30:00] what I call the "Rome of China."
[30:02] Because it is very similar to Italy—
[30:05] this kind of wall-based, solid, ancient
[30:07] Roman aesthetic. So, Chinese culture is
[30:10] not as simple as just saying "it's
[30:12] Chinese culture" and leaving it at that
[30:14] . For example, if you go to Fujian or
[30:17] southern Zhejiang, you will find that
[30:20] the roofs of these buildings are all
[30:22] double-curved. What is a double curve?
[30:25] It means it doesn't just curve one way;
[30:27] it curves the other way too—curving
[30:29] in two directions. Houses in these vast
[30:31] regions can basically be called Song
[30:33] Dynasty houses, because their
[30:35] construction methods have hardly
[30:36] changed since the Song Dynasty. So, can
[30:39] we find any actual houses from the Song
[30:41] Dynasty? From southern Zhejiang all the
[30:43] way to northern Fujian, a vast number
[30:45] of these houses are essentially Song
[30:47] Dynasty structures. If you look,
[30:49] including their floor plans and
[30:50] construction methods, the local
[30:52] carpentry schools have basically
[30:53] maintained Song techniques, remaining
[30:55] unchanged even through the Qing Dynasty
[30:57] . That’s very interesting.
[30:59] >> A typical Song carpentry practice is
[31:01] the "double curve." One is the double
[31:03] curve, and another is this exposed
[31:04] dougong bracket; in reality—
[31:06] >> The dougong truly served a structural
[31:08] purpose before the Song Dynasty. After
[31:10] the Song, dougong became purely
[31:12] decorative.
[31:13] >> Is that so?
[31:14] >> Yes, up until the Song, the Chinese
[31:16] structural system worked like this: the
[31:17] column reached the dougong, and from
[31:19] there, it transitioned into a dougong
[31:20] system.
[31:21] >> Yes, right.
[31:22] >> After the Song, starting from the Yuan
[31:25] Dynasty, the column actually extended
[31:27] all the way to the base of the beams at
[31:30] the top, while the exterior brackets
[31:32] became decorative. This was a decisive
[31:35] change—construction needed to be
[31:37] simplified, moving into a more
[31:39] pragmatic stage. But if you look at,
[31:42] for example, the Hakka and Minnan
[31:44] regions in Fujian, all of their houses
[31:47] still follow Song construction methods.
[31:49] They call what they live in "
[31:51] palace-style" homes, meaning every
[31:53] family's layout resembles the imperial
[31:55] style. They’re absolutely right,
[31:57] because it is indeed the Song style. Of
[32:00] course, in the southern areas where
[32:02] Guangdong and Fujian meet, large-scale
[32:04] collective housing appeared. This is
[32:06] also a world wonder. Basically, it’s
[32:09] one clan, which is actually more like a
[32:11] Wei-Jin tradition.
[32:12] >> Like those circular ones?
[32:14] >> Yes, it's an entire family.
[32:15] >> Like those Hakka tulou, or earthen
[32:17] buildings.
[32:17] >> It could be 300 households.
[32:19] >> Is it really called one "family" on
[32:21] such a massive scale? They all live
[32:24] under one roof.
[32:25] >> That definitely has to be one family
[32:27] clan. After deciding not to divide the
[32:28] family, they formed a collective group.
[32:30] This practice continued right through
[32:32] the Qing Dynasty, and even into the
[32:34] 1960s and 70s. This is a living
[32:37] tradition that never broke. You can see
[32:40] how many changes have happened along
[32:42] the way. Do you think there’s a
[32:46] global trend towards cheaper, faster,
[32:49] and more efficient construction, and is
[32:51] architecture moving in that direction?
[32:55] >> I think the most fundamental struggle
[32:58] in this world is twofold: one is the
[33:00] struggle between the natural and the
[33:03] artificial. The other is the struggle
[33:05] between standardization and
[33:07] diversification. But it seems that
[33:09] currently, standardization has the
[33:11] upper hand.
[33:12] >> Waves of anti-globalization are also
[33:15] rising.
[33:16] >> Ah.
[33:17] >> Right?
[33:18] >> This is the Yin and Yang.
[33:20] >> Who knows, maybe it will turn around.
[33:22] >> Perhaps Chinese tradition is the future
[33:24] .
[33:24] >> It’s hard to say.
[33:26] >> Really, it’s entirely possible that
[33:28] it will be Chinese methods that......
[33:30] >> ultimately solve a worldwide problem in
[33:32] modernization. Do you see? Humanity
[33:34] won’t necessarily stay this way
[33:36] forever.
[33:37] >> It will continue to evolve.
[33:39] >> But we happen to live in this era.
[33:41] >> So we have to rely more on Professor
[33:43] Wang and Professor Lu to save us.
[33:45] >> I still think human effort is the
[33:46] deciding factor.
[33:47] >> It’s that kind of intellectual
[33:49] self-awareness.
[33:49] >> It’s very important.
[33:51] >> As Socrates said, the unexamined life
[33:53] is not worth living.
[33:55] >> Yes.
[33:56] >> In fact, every time an architect
[33:58] designs a new building, they are also
[34:00] re-examining.
[34:01] >> Our lives. Professor Wang is the main
[34:04] pioneer of our resistance against the "
[34:06] two bedrooms, one living room" layout.
[34:07] >> Actually, I’m not really that; as a
[34:09] member of the architect community, I
[34:11] often feel very self-reproachful.
[34:13] >> Because I ask a few basic questions:
[34:15] who gave architects the right to draw
[34:18] blueprints and dictate that you must
[34:20] live in a two-bedroom or three-bedroom
[34:22] apartment?
[34:23] >> This professional right is not
[34:25] something you are born with.
[34:26] >> Second, since you know you have this
[34:28] power, you cannot be that irresponsible
[34:31] ; this is what I often feel guilty
[34:33] about, because most architects feel
[34:35] this way.
[34:35] >> The space for survival is relatively
[34:37] small.
[34:37] >> Survival is very difficult.
[34:39] >> Yes.
[34:40] >> You aren't struggling anymore now.
[34:42] >> It’s the same.
[34:43] >> I’ve actually had this thought since
[34:45] the very beginning when I was sleeping
[34:47] on the floor. I have never changed;
[34:49] when we first arrived in Hangzhou, we
[34:52] only had one bamboo mat and slept
[34:54] directly on the concrete floor. I was
[34:58] like that back then, I had this thought
[35:00] back then, uh, I still have this
[35:03] thought today, I have never changed,
[35:05] and I have never compromised for any
[35:07] so-called project, never.
[35:11] >> To a certain extent, architects are
[35:13] artists who can have a direct and
[35:16] significant impact on society.
[35:18] >> Yet, being an architect is so difficult
[35:21] .
[35:23] >> How many people study architecture but
[35:25] don't have the right to design, or
[35:27] don't have the right to create, right?
[35:31] Many people study for a long time—my
[35:33] daughter is an example—she said at
[35:36] most I spend all day drawing toilets.
[35:39] >> Even if you graduated from Harvard.
[35:41] >> Yes, Harvard graduates, if you go to a
[35:44] big firm.
[35:45] >> It’s possible that you could spend
[35:47] your whole life drawing toilets; then
[35:50] she started studying architecture at a
[35:52] better university, later found it hard
[35:55] to find a job, so she double-majored
[35:57] and studied economics.
[35:59] >> When it came time for graduation, I
[36:01] went to attend it, and a very
[36:03] interesting phenomenon appeared: in the
[36:05] economics department, for those
[36:07] receiving degrees.
[36:08] >> Many were Asians.
[36:10] >> Mm.
[36:11] >> When it came to the architecture
[36:12] department, when receiving diplomas, at
[36:14] that time at Cornell.
[36:15] >> It was mostly Westerners. Ah.
[36:18] >> The line was mostly white people.
[36:20] >> Then my daughter came over, very
[36:22] confused and asked.
[36:23] >> Why. "
[36:24] >> Dad.""Are we rich?" She said, "All rich
[36:32] people study architecture," and asked,
[36:35] "Are we rich?" He said I’m not
[36:37] considered wealthy, so you must study
[36:40] hard. The amount of architecture built
[36:42] worldwide in the 20th century exceeded
[36:44] what humanity had seen in the past few
[36:46] thousand years.
[36:47] >> Yes.
[36:48] >> Volume.
[36:49] >> Volume increased.
[36:51] >> Increased, indeed.
[36:52] >> Mainly because the public's demand
[36:54] increased.
[36:55] >> Mm. But when you reach a status like
[36:58] Professor Wang's, I feel it hits that
[37:00] point—a question of the intellectual,
[37:02] as you put it—that is, you seem to
[37:04] have a certain responsibility for the
[37:06] face of this society.
[37:08] >> You should bear some kind of
[37:09] responsibility.
[37:11] >> That’s why we’ve always been
[37:12] teaching, always staying in academia.
[37:15] >> So, Professor Lu and Professor Wang are
[37:17] a bit like Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin
[37:20] .
[37:20] >> Were you two together since university?
[37:23] Same major, and same school?
[37:25] >> It’s very admirable to us young
[37:27] people.
[37:27] >> The materials are all very well
[37:29] organized.
[37:30] >> He really wants to ask you.
[37:32] >> He really wants to ask how the two of
[37:34] you divide your work.
[37:35] >> It just feels very perfect.
[37:37] >> And you know the details so well; it
[37:39] was mentioned in the car that you were
[37:41] his first...
[37:42] >> Junior fellow student.
[37:43] >> Girlfriend.
[37:44] >> And it’s been that way until today.
[37:47] Mm, is this called childhood
[37:50] sweethearts? Is this considered a first
[37:53] love?
[37:53] >> Pretty much, I suppose.
[37:55] >> Professor Lu, Professor Lu has to speak
[37:58] , Professor Lu.
[37:59] >> I’d like to know what different roles
[38:01] you two play in your work.
[38:02] >> Young people today seem relatively
[38:05] passive when it comes to emotions,
[38:08] dating, or marriage.
[38:09] >> Seeing such a successful partnership
[38:12] from university until now, so long and
[38:15] so good, and so well-matched, really
[38:18] makes us envious.
[38:19] >> Maybe it’s because I do what he
[38:21] doesn’t like to do. And the things he
[38:23] doesn’t like to do happen to be what
[38:25] I’m good at.
[38:26] >> For example? For example?
[38:29] >> What you saw today is the Fuchun Art
[38:32] Museum.
[38:33] >> Actually, we spent nearly five years on
[38:35] it from start to finish. Think of how
[38:40] many people were involved in that
[38:42] process to coordinate such complex
[38:45] matters; as the project manager, simply
[38:47] put, I provided most of the ideas and
[38:50] the basic philosophy.
[38:53] >> Yes.
[38:55] >> Dealing with the coordination between
[38:57] various trades, and the main one
[38:59] arguing with the construction units
[39:02] on-site.
[39:03] >> Isn't it because of this? Yes, it is
[39:05] precisely because of this that you have
[39:08] formed this unbreakable, complementary
[39:10] relationship.
[39:11] >> So, that is the reason you have stayed
[39:13] together from beginning to end, could
[39:15] one say that?
[39:15] >> Perhaps after a long time, we just felt
[39:18] that we couldn't do without each other.
[39:20] >> Actually, I think it’s more important
[39:22] , because in typical design institutes,
[39:24] a lot was done beforehand; I am, in
[39:25] fact, equivalent to this work.
[39:27] >> But after the design institute hands
[39:29] over the blueprints, our Chinese
[39:30] institutes basically don't care much
[39:32] anymore; it’s up to the construction
[39:33] team to rush the work. The institutes
[39:35] say that, generally speaking, they
[39:36] visit the site at least three times:
[39:38] once to hand over drawings, once for
[39:39] mid-term inspection, and once for final
[39:41] inspection—three trips are enough.
[39:42] >> Are you the design department and they
[39:44] the engineering department?
[39:45] >> Not me, it is an extension of my design
[39:47] department, focusing on how to finally
[39:49] implement the design down to the
[39:50] details. Take the simplest example: I
[39:53] want a massive space, and I cannot have
[39:55] any pillars inside this space, right?
[39:58] Then, when the design institute comes
[40:00] to coordinate on this, they say, "I
[40:02] can't do that; I have to put two
[40:04] pillars in for you." And then, it’s
[40:06] no longer the thing you wanted.
[40:09] That’s one scenario. Another one is,
[40:11] for example, when they design it, I
[40:14] specify wood.
[40:15] >> Then they tell you, "I can't buy this
[40:17] material." For a project like the
[40:18] Fushan Pavilion, the kind of situation
[40:20] he described must happen at least
[40:22] 10,000 times.
[40:22] >> I—I get it now. Do you know what this
[40:25] is? This is design. This is
[40:27] craftsmanship. Why do I bring up this
[40:30] term? My father was a section chief in
[40:32] a factory’s technology department,
[40:34] and I always used to ask my father what
[40:36] "craftsmanship" actually meant. My
[40:37] father said, "Many of our things are
[40:40] actually not inferior to others in
[40:41] design sometimes; this 'craftsmanship'
[40:44] is about how to work from the
[40:45] blueprints—that's what the design
[40:47] department does.""Our craftsmanship is
[40:50] the entire process of taking your
[40:52] blueprints and actually making it."
[40:54] This process largely determines the
[40:57] quality of the product. It’s not just
[40:59] thinking or designing; it’s making it
[41:02] . So, that has influenced me right up
[41:04] to the present. I pay close attention
[41:07] to how something is actually made.
[41:09] There is no lack of ideas, inspiration,
[41:11] or wisdom in that process; it is
[41:14] equally...
[41:14] >> What you’re saying is basically
[41:16] correct.
[41:17] >> How it’s made is somewhat similar to
[41:19] that.
[41:19] >> Actually, the type of architect I
[41:21] advocate for now should be just as you
[41:24] described: design and the subsequent
[41:26] construction craftsmanship must be
[41:28] combined to form a complete architect.
[41:30] In fact, traditional Chinese
[41:31] architecture was exactly this way—it
[41:33] had to be implemented by the craftsmen,
[41:35] otherwise, it didn't count. But the
[41:37] architecture on our market today, this
[41:39] whole system, is actually quite
[41:41] primitive; it all came from Europe,
[41:43] from that École des Beaux-Arts system
[41:45] in Paris. Architects from this
[41:47] tradition think of themselves as
[41:49] artists; once they finish the design,
[41:50] they don't understand materials or
[41:52] craftsmanship. They are disconnected.
[41:54] Exactly, that’s why I have so much
[41:56] respect for people who focus on
[41:57] craftsmanship.
[41:58] >> Actually, it's a bit like the
[42:00] partnership of Liang Sicheng and Lin
[42:01] Huiyin; Liang Sicheng only knew how to
[42:03] draw the sketches,
[42:04] >> the actual craftsmanship behind it was
[42:07] Lin Huiyin's.
[42:08] >> So you are quite right, that's how it
[42:11] was from the beginning.
[42:12] >> It seems my example was quite spot on.
[42:15] >> He had an essay called "Eight Houses
[42:17] You Can't Live In.""
[42:18] >> Eight Houses You Can't Live In"
[42:20] essentially established my own design
[42:22] language. Yes, they were actually eight
[42:23] lamps with wooden bases, a gift I made
[42:25] for her.
[42:25] >> Just this small.
[42:27] >> Oh my.
[42:28] >> With small wooden bases.
[42:29] >> Very romantic.
[42:30] >> Very romantic. I think it’s a very
[42:32] interesting idea that each of my lamps
[42:34] is essentially an architectural model.
[42:36] >> Right.
[42:37] >> I took a house with one living room and
[42:38] two bedrooms, and inside there were
[42:40] eight actual buildings hanging on the
[42:42] wall.
[42:42] >> It's called seeing the big in the small
[42:45] .
[42:47] >> Creating a world. As for the future
[42:50] architectural style of China—we all
[42:53] know the current situation—will it
[42:55] return to some national style, a
[42:57] neo-national style, or will it be
[42:59] filled with modern blocks everywhere?
[43:02] >> Because in this era, it's hard to unify
[43:05] everything into a single style. I
[43:08] certainly wouldn't do that. Like when
[43:10] we did this teaching experiment here, I
[43:13] once said, "I want to reconstruct a
[43:15] contemporary Chinese vernacular
[43:17] architecture." Our dean asked if I
[43:19] meant to reconstruct Chinese
[43:21] architecture entirely, and I said I
[43:23] didn't have such a grand ambition. My
[43:26] dream is a diverse society; what I can
[43:29] explore is just one approach. There
[43:31] should be many others.
[43:33] >> Won't those many varieties interfere
[43:35] and clash with each other?
[43:36] >> Look at Chinese society, even within
[43:38] Jiangnan architecture alone, there are
[43:40] so many types. In fact, this is what I
[43:42] think culture is: a hundred schools of
[43:44] thought contending. Letting a hundred
[43:46] flowers bloom.
[43:47] >> You find this scene very beautiful.
[43:49] >> Yes, I think various styles...
[43:51] >> There is a Hong Kong writer named Chan
[43:54] Koon-chung, um,
[43:54] >> he once wrote a passage. He said the
[43:58] best residential area is one where,
[44:00] within 20 to 25 minutes of walking from
[44:03] home, you can encounter five different
[44:05] types of housing. Meaning you have
[44:09] high-rises.
[44:10] >> Glass commercial buildings, but also
[44:13] traditional lane houses. Villas with
[44:15] gardens.
[44:16] >> Yes, that’s what makes life truly
[44:18] interesting, really.
[44:19] >> Actually, another thing I insist on in
[44:21] my architecture is that I don't like
[44:23] big things.
[44:24] >> Hmm.
[44:25] >> If I am given a project that is
[44:27] inherently large, you'll see I use
[44:28] various methods to break it down into
[44:31] >> many smaller ones.
[44:32] >> Many small pieces; like when you go to
[44:34] the Fushan Museum, the building is
[44:35] actually very large,
[44:36] >> but in reality, you don't feel it.
[44:38] >> I firmly emphasize the value of small
[44:41] things within the large ones.
[44:43] >> The value of weak and small things, a
[44:45] kind of contemporary Chinese vernacular
[44:48] architecture.
[44:50] >> Let's keep in mind that we should see
[44:52] more of their work in the future. Thank
[44:55] you, that's great. Oh, take a photo.
[44:59] >> He wants to take one with you.
[45:01] >> He has to give it to his daughter.
[45:03] >> You have to give it.
[45:05] >> You have to give women architects a bit
[45:07] of a treat.
[45:10] >> Without him, I wouldn't be able to work
[45:12] . Here is my number, Professor Lu,
[45:14] let's add each other.
[45:16] >> If you really must reach me, you can
[45:18] write a letter by hand. You have to
[45:20] give me your address. Where did my
[45:23] phone go? It’s gone.
[45:25] >> Hmm.
[45:26] >> It doesn't matter if we don't have it.
[45:28] >> Yes, you.
[45:29] >> That was a fascinating talk, and you
[45:32] two are such a great duo.
[45:33] >> You work together so well.
[45:36] >> Because we often have to deal with
[45:39] various things at work, you two are
[45:41] invincible together.
[45:43] >> So we are like the couple from the
[45:45] Return of the Condor Heroes. No wonder.
[45:48] >> I remember that roof, you know?
[45:51] >> The craftsmen, they laid it out in this
[45:53] irregular way. In the end, Professor
[45:56] Wang said to look at the sunset.
[45:58] >> We found inspiration and told the
[46:00] craftsmen. Just look at the sunset and
[46:03] lay it out like that.
[46:05] >> It really is like that.
[46:06] >> You will find that when you say it this
[46:07] way, the Chinese craftsmen understand.
[46:09] >> They understood. It's very interesting,
[46:11] it's a cultural matter.
[46:12] >> It is a visual and emotional way of
[46:13] thinking. Oh, I loved this wall the
[46:15] moment I walked in. Opposite.
[46:18] >> This, this is the tile I mentioned, the
[46:20] small broken tiles, all recycled.
[46:23] >> Usually a tile is this big, look, these
[46:25] are even smaller pieces. You have a
[46:27] warehouse, right?
[46:29] >> No, they were actually from the
[46:30] demolition sites at the time.
[46:31] >> You have no idea how many houses have
[46:33] been demolished in China. When we were
[46:34] building, people would often call and
[46:36] say, "I have 20 million tiles, do you
[46:37] want them?"
[46:38] >> We have to collect all the old things,
[46:39] even if they are smashed.
[46:41] >> Yes.
[46:42] >> You should look at it when the light
[46:44] hits it, it's all in there.
[46:46] >> Oh, it really is, it really is.
[46:48] >> These are all those tiles. Turn around,
[46:51] behind that are the jars, what we call
[46:54] Shaoxing wine pots. Oh, I've seen walls
[46:56] made of those pots. Oh.
[46:59] >> And this brick, this brick is a mixture
[47:01] . Look, these are all recycled.
[47:03] >> This is the pot, those pot fragments.
[47:05] >> Pot fragments, and then those jar
[47:06] shards.
[47:07] >> This is the jar shard.
[47:08] >> And there's more, there's more.
[47:09] >> Yes, look, the higher up it goes, the
[47:11] more there are.
[47:12] >> Right.
[47:13] >> Wow, this is so fun, so fun.
[47:15] >> And at such a low cost, too.
[47:17] >> Yes, yes. It can't be random, it must
[47:20] have a design, you also have to plan
[47:21] which part, my entire preliminary
[47:23] drawing,
[47:23] >> But you don't rely entirely on the
[47:25] drawing, why? Because
[47:27] >> when feeding the materials on-site,
[47:29] it's not strictly following the drawing
[47:30] ,
[47:31] >> so it contains both my design elements
[47:33] and the craftsman's own free
[47:34] interpretation based on skill; they are
[47:37] two separate things, yes. Hey, it forms
[47:39] this very philosophical feeling, a...
[47:41] >> Fantastic, fantastic,
[47:44] >> thank you so much, Teacher Lu.
[47:45] >> Teacher Wang, oh, next time you're in
[47:48] Hangzhou, let's
[47:49] >> keep on talking, keep on Vegetables
[48:23] should be a mix of meat and veg; soak
[48:25] in rice-washed water for three hours,
[48:27] then rinse under running water. Teacher
[48:31] , this meal was recommended by Chen
[48:33] Xiaoqing. Now, Xiaoqing is basically my
[48:36] seal of quality, right? Chef Fang, Chef
[48:39] Fang,
[48:39] >> and he looks a bit like a martial arts
[48:41] actor.
[48:41] >> Mm,
[48:42] >> yes,
[48:43] >> Chun-hua.
[48:44] >> Yes, many people say that. I started
[48:46] doing this when I was 16.
[48:47] >> Was it passed down in your family or
[48:49] something?
[48:49] >> No, no, because I wasn't good at school
[48:51] back then, so I just had to do manual
[48:53] labor.
[48:53] >> Not good at school, but ended up
[48:55] becoming a gourmet chef. This is crispy
[48:58] pork intestine; I don't recommend
[48:59] dipping the first piece.
[49:01] >> Ah, just eat it directly,
[49:03] >> eat it directly, take a small bite.
[49:04] >> Mm, okay.
[49:06] >> You must launch a few new dishes every
[49:08] year, or are you still selling
[49:09] traditional Hangzhou dishes?
[49:10] >> Ah,
[49:11] >> yes, yes, yes.
[49:13] >> What do you think is the secret?
[49:15] >> Because after all these years, I
[49:17] haven't opened any new shops; I just
[49:19] stick to this one place.
[49:20] >> Don't you want to get rich?
[49:22] >> You can't just get rich recklessly.
[49:25] This is my latest invention, sour soup
[49:28] beef.
[49:28] >> This is naturally fermented from fruits
[49:30] and vegetables.
[49:31] >> It's just like the pickled peppers or
[49:33] kimchi from Sichuan,
[49:34] >> it's naturally fermented soup beef.
[49:36] >> Yes, there isn't a drop of vinegar in
[49:38] it.
[49:38] >> Thank you.
[49:39] >> Yes, you can drink this soup. It has a
[49:41] fruity aroma, right? Your sourness
[49:43] isn't the sourness of vinegar,
[49:45] >> carrots and this cloud-ear fungus, let
[49:48] it ferment naturally,
[49:49] >> because vinegar, your palate might not
[49:52] really like it, but natural things—
[49:55] let me emphasize what has been denied
[49:58] by netizens or tourists from other
[50:00] places, the West Lake vinegar fish, I
[50:03] >> Teacher, you must try this today.
[50:06] >> Wow, the texture of this meat is great.
[50:09] >> Tender, mm,
[50:12] >> If something hits your mouth and
[50:14] highlights one specific flavor, say,
[50:17] too sour or too sweet, will you reach
[50:19] for it with your chopsticks a second
[50:22] time?
[50:23] >> Balanced, yes, it's very balanced. Your
[50:26] palate reacts as if there's hairy crab,
[50:28] I don't know if you've sensed that.
[50:30] >> Mm.
[50:31] >> This is actually very important, it's
[50:33] the most original way of preparation.
[50:35] >> Ah, yes. This fish, once you pan-sear
[50:38] it, it’s like the aftertaste of tea,
[50:41] it comes back up, that lingering
[50:43] sweetness, when you smell it, it's the
[50:46] aroma of crab meat.
[50:47] >> Right, it's the ginger mince on top
[50:49] reacting with the vinegar.
[50:51] >> It's not that there's any crab roe
[50:53] inside.
[50:53] >> No, no, no, no, that would be too fancy
[50:56] . I often think about something: for
[50:58] example, say your brother hasn't been
[51:00] home for a long time, and Mom cooks a
[51:02] meal for you. It's definitely going to
[51:04] be exceptionally delicious.
[51:06] >> Right.
[51:07] >> Why? It’s because it’s full of the
[51:10] original, authentic flavors.
[51:11] >> For instance, when she braises a fish,
[51:13] she uses little oil, little salt, and
[51:15] very little MSG.
[51:16] >> You're just eating the natural taste of
[51:18] the ingredients.
[51:19] >> Right, and that flavor is actually the
[51:21] most unforgettable. And then there's
[51:22] something else, right? Some dishes
[51:24] nowadays...Some people just love to "
[51:26] improve" them.
[51:27] >> Mm.
[51:28] >> I think traditional things shouldn't be
[51:31] . Take West Lake Vinegar Fish, for
[51:32] instance, it ranks first among
[51:34] Hangzhou's famous dishes.
[51:36] >> There must be a reason for that.
[51:37] >> Then why do so many netizens say that
[51:39] Hangzhou's West Lake Vinegar Fish is a
[51:42] "dark cuisine"?
[51:42] >> Before coming to Hangzhou this time, I
[51:44] always thought Vinegar Fish was
[51:45] terrible.
[51:46] >> Right, because I used to think it was
[51:48] just...just sour.
[51:49] >> I’m using fish.
[51:50] >> But how is the fish meat prepared to be
[51:53] this tender? Or...
[51:55] >> First, when you steam the fish, you
[51:57] have to control the time—let's say 2
[51:59] minutes and 35 seconds, secretly take
[52:02] note of that: 2 minutes and 35 seconds.
[52:04] >> The best state is when every piece of
[52:06] fish curls up. That's it.
[52:08] >> Oh, and it has to be fresh enough to
[52:10] curl up. Even the best chef can't do
[52:12] that with a dead fish. Once the fish is
[52:15] steamed, it should look quite lively.
[52:17] >> The fish is like, "I'm already dead,
[52:19] where would I get a lively fish?"
[52:21] >> What a hard-working fish, it even looks
[52:23] like it.
[52:24] >> This is where a chef's basic skills are
[52:26] tested.
[52:26] >> What basic skills? When you add the
[52:29] seasoning, for example, your soy sauce,
[52:31] sugar, and vinegar must be in the
[52:32] correct proportion.
[52:33] >> Oh.
[52:34] >> Like you mentioned just now, the
[52:36] sweetness, the sourness, and the
[52:38] saltiness.
[52:39] >> They create different reactions in your
[52:41] mouth. First, I think it's the
[52:43] sweetness.
[52:44] >> Second, the sourness.
[52:46] >> Then the umami, and the natural
[52:49] reaction of this umami is flavorless—
[52:51] this is the best and most sophisticated
[52:54] level. I didn't like it before because
[52:56] the first bite was too sour, it was
[52:58] overpowering, and then you couldn't
[53:00] taste anything else. When the first
[53:02] bite is that sour, it’s off-putting.
[53:04] >> Actually, Hangzhou cuisine is mostly
[53:06] light.
[53:06] >> Light.
[53:08] >> And it highlights things like the
[53:10] natural, original flavors of the
[53:12] ingredients.
[53:13] >> And seasonality, right?
[53:15] >> Yes, seasonality is very important.
[53:17] >> That sounds a lot like Cantonese
[53:19] cuisine.
[53:19] >> No, it's different. Cantonese cuisine
[53:22] is really all about the broth. Like if
[53:24] you're making something, it needs a
[53:25] base soup or something like that.
[53:26] Hangzhou cuisine doesn't really have
[53:28] that.
[53:28] >> Pan-frying, stir-frying, deep-frying.
[53:30] >> Exactly.
[53:31] >> Which one is used the most? Stir-frying
[53:33] is the most common.
[53:34] >> Stir-frying.
[53:34] >> I love stir-fried dishes.
[53:36] >> Yeah, because it has that strong "wok
[53:37] hei."
[53:38] >> Right, that’s the flavor you’re
[53:39] eating.
[53:40] >> Yeah.
[53:40] >> Usually, dishes elsewhere are named
[53:42] after their main ingredients.
[53:44] >> Right. Have you noticed that many
[53:46] Hangzhou dishes aren't? Like the West
[53:48] Lake, they're half natural, half
[53:50] cultural. For example, West Lake Fish
[53:52] in Vinegar Gravy.
[53:53] >> It's named after West Lake.
[53:55] >> Mm.
[53:56] >> Second, Dongpo Pork, see? It has
[53:59] Dongpo's name in it.
[54:00] >> Song Sao Fish Soup, named after Madam
[54:03] Song.
[54:04] >> It's all cultural.
[54:05] >> Right, half cultural.
[54:07] >> There’s no "authentic" Hangzhou
[54:08] cuisine.
[54:09] >> Right, no dish is truly "authentic"
[54:11] anymore. Because now with
[54:13] transportation and everything
[54:14] developing so fast, you know. We could
[54:16] have lunch in Beijing and dinner in
[54:19] Hangzhou. You know, the old Beijingers
[54:21] don't like the tripe on the old streets
[54:23] , but I absolutely love it.
[54:25] >> Hey, I love offal, that's why I saw the
[54:27] pork intestines.
[54:28] >> And it’s so crispy. Look, it’s
[54:31] crispy when we eat it hot, but it stays
[54:32] crispy even when it’s cold.
[54:34] >> Right, my pork intestines used to be
[54:36] deep-fried. They're best right when
[54:38] they're served, yes.
[54:39] >> Crispy, then after maybe 30 or 40
[54:41] seconds.
[54:41] >> Yes, they go soft immediately. I spend
[54:44] every day thinking about how I can keep
[54:46] it crispy for ten minutes.
[54:48] >> Can you tell me how you do it?
[54:50] >> It's too hard, I can't say, I can't say
[54:53] .
[54:53] >> Can't tell you, that's adorable, it's a
[54:56] patent.
[54:56] >> I mean, it took me three whole years to
[54:59] go from 15 seconds to 75 seconds—that
[55:02] 60-second difference. Testing it every
[55:05] time.
[55:06] >> Oh.
[55:07] >> Well, keeping something so tender.
[55:09] >> If you teach him, he can do skincare.
[55:12] >> Can you help me stay tender too?
[55:13] >> Yes, handle it for me, help me handle
[55:15] it, then teach me, let me learn from a
[55:17] master. Look, this is also artistic
[55:19] creation; he has to go to the
[55:20] countryside to sketch and gather
[55:21] inspiration.
[55:22] >> So you just love this.
[55:24] >> First, I enjoy it, and second, it's
[55:26] also for a living, right?
[55:28] >> This is called a gentleman loves wealth
[55:30] and acquires it in the right way.
[55:31] >> The right way. So this is also the way
[55:34] to success; it's not only his way to
[55:37] success, but also Dongjiao's way,
[55:39] sticking to quality and innovation.
[55:42] >> Right, he just sticks to quality and
[55:43] insists on innovation, doesn't he? Give
[55:45] it, give it to them. Thank you, it’s
[55:47] delicious.
