The regions of China have an cultural heritage that is five thousands years old. As a Chinese future architect, how to interpretate this long history has always been a great challenge to me.

 

History is a difficult issue. In our rapidly changing time we have witnessed how history rewrites itself everyday both as recordings of things happening and as reinterpretations of thing happened. The notion of history has haunted generations of great intellectuals and is becoming more and more a challenging topic.The notion of history has haunted generations of great intellectuals and is becoming more and more a challenging topic.

 

When we make foolhardy judgments on whether something is history-fulor history-less (with the presumption that the-ful is better than the-less), we are simply escaping from the more intimidating situation of exploring the underlying structures of history. It is convenient for the mind to cut the outer skin of history into pieces and pick up the better-defined, more tangible historical fragments, be they Rossi's types, Venturi's symbols, or Ruskin's taste, and then say that we care about history. It is the incompleteness of vision that has made us rely on perceivable reuse of historical elements to reinforce our association with history. 

 

However, I refuse to look at history that way. Does history indicate any moral obligation? No. Is history primarily a source of duplicable patterns? No. Does a glorious past represent something that our sinful present would ultimately return to? Not at all. But should the issue of history be addressed in every design solution? A big fat yes this time. In my mind, an unfulfilled ever-evolving, emerging and unfolding process that raises more questions than answers.

 

Therefore, it is the critical involvement in the process, not the superficial following to its existing patterns, which contributes to history most.