De Generatiedenkers: PINWU Design Studio

We’re in China. A country that has surprised us more than we would have expected. It is the land where hot weather drives men to pull up their shirts and go through their day belly out and forwards, whatever the size of it. It is the land where superstition is not to be taken lightly; where stuffed sleeping cats should make you feel at home and nearly everything else from the color purple to stroking a lion a certain way means good fortune. It is the land where insanely fast delivery services and flashy highrise exists aside a deep sense of history and spirituality. And. It is the land where we intended to meet and learn from designers embracing the Chinese heritage and translating this to modern society; a Chinese perspective on generational thinking. We sent emails that never arrived because of certain Chinese firewalls; we made calls in our best -non-existent- Chinese. And so, at our very last day of a month in China we – Jonas, Dorine and one-year old Esa – arrived in a village called Qingshan – about a 3 hours’ drive by car from Shanghai. We pull our luggage onto the curb in front of Róng Design Library, situated in a 1960’s Chinese building with doors wide open.

Small town, big efforts

We are welcomed by Jovana and her team and they help out gracefully carrying our heavy bags inside. We enter a spacious hall featuring a large wooden joinery structure. It is an ‘enter through the gift shop’ kind of layout where it is hard to not be drawn to the design tableware, art and furniture displayed in bright yellow cabinets. On the walls: rows and rows of maps, showcasing research on materials. It takes only a few minutes of getting acquainted with each other before a large group of people enter the premises, carrying red flags and all wearing blue keycords. And as has happened every day since we got to China, they all flock towards our blond one-year-old son, waving phones and holding out hands to grab him for a selfie, “so cuuute”. We excuse ourselves for being a distraction. She laughs. “I’m glad to see he doesn’t mind too much. Our German co-founder Chris lives here with his wife and their four super blond children. The special attention is a lot to manage, especially as they are very introverted.” We can totally imagine this, even if they would not have been introverts. Just one month of it is already quite intense. Yet, we are grateful to catch a glimpse of Chris through such an anecdote, as he is the only one we will not be able to meet today. Lei will join us as soon as he arrives back from a business trip.

We slowly extract our boy from the grasp of the tour guide and hand him over to the lady who has especially come to babysit him while we have the interview – not at all an extraordinary offer in this country, yet it feels like a luxury. And as they head towards the toys, we enter the library. “This building once served as the cultural centre of Qingshan Village. It had partly collapsed when we first got here,” Jovana explains. There are special regulations for old buildings in this country, stating that only if it has collapsed one can build a new structure. That is why the previous landlord had let the building sit for decades, to let it slowly crumble, even though law also states such buildings have to be saved. And this is where Jovana, Lei and Chris interfered. They turned a ruin into a beautiful, holistic and meaningful space. And it turns out they did not leave it at that, as they are now renovating a third residence to become an extension of their Design Library and workspace. 

Róng Desing Library receives mobs of tourists, officials, and a few international designers each year for inspiration and residencies. Their work and influence have shaped the attraction to this small town, giving the saying ‘it takes a village…’ to another level.

“What the butterfly is to one, is water to another.”

Tradition

There is a bamboo aisle, an aisle with embroidery, one with ceramics, all displaying pieces of raw material; examples of traditional techniques and new modern takes on that. We zoom into an embroidery of butterflies. “A Western Chinese nationality believe they are the descendants of butterflies, they honour the transformative insect throughout life. When girls are six years old, for example, they start working on their own wedding gown, covered with butterflies embroidered by hand. It often takes until the marriage for them to finish it – and after being wed, they start embroidering a gown for their funeral. This craft is very specific to this culture, to them a soul is kept alive through honouring the butterfly this way,” Jovana tells us. 

As we pass by the aisles in the library showcasing different materials and crafts, it becomes more and more evident that a certain kind of superstition often lies at the origin of the traditional works. Like: richly decorated stuffed tigers are kept to protect the baby from evil. And: the colour white belongs to the dead. We ask about this layer of belief to the work, where is it all coming from? “What the butterfly is to one, is water to another. Such origin stories shape different kinds of superstitious concepts and crafts. And it goes even beyond differences per region, of which there are already so many. There is even a different zen for different layers of society. A farmer needs to believe that if he does a certain thing the weather will be good for his crops. Such belief is irrelevant to the more aristocratic layer of society, who would rather wish for other things”. This elaborate range of superstitious beliefs, which vary throughout society, is consolidated and reinforced by spiritual movements like Taoism and Buddhism. 

We found that all these soul searches fit easily within the overwhelming landscapes like the peaking cloud mountains and waterfalls we’ve come to experience ourselves. All combined are an infinite source of meaningful traditions and complimentary crafts, still – for a part at least – kept alive today because of the efforts of this studio.

“We experience that crossovers and adaptation of crafts are vital to keep the stories of heritage alive.”

Future Tradition

In the meantime Lei has arrived with their four-year-old son. Flight after flight had been delayed and apparently, him and Jovana had only seen each other minutes between business trips they are both having. It’s a fast life, even among the intricate crafts they are studying. “Have you shown them the rest yet?” “No we got until here! They are asking more about the soul of the work,” Jovana replies to Lei. We are reminded that we only have about an hour left before we are to head to their house to have dinner and shortly after that we are to travel to Shanghai to catch a plane of our own. Yes, our soul search is slowing down an actual study of all the handicrafts, and besides that, our own son is not taking the separation with us very well. So we had often been interrupted by crying, clinging to legs and coordination with the babysitter. The arrival of Lei and Jovana’s son turns out to be a blessing, and the kids head out into the garden together. 

With one eye on the clock, we turn back to this ‘soul’, and how we can attempt to keep it alive in this short-of-time, globalised and online world. “We experience that crossovers and adaptation of crafts are vital to keep the stories of heritage alive and even reinvent what they could be today. We strive to have these crafts withstand the test of time. This is why we invite other designers too, to spend time with the material and uncover a story that ignites them and their generation. Remarkable ideas have emerged from this.” Lei explains. An example of that is the casting research they did in collaboration with designers this year. They set out to reimagine the boundaries of casting and so experimented with the casting of live mushrooms in moulds, casting the object itself, and even casting smells. “We love it when the craft also becomes the philosophy” Jovana adds. “And yes, sometimes there is some revolt against ideas that arise. Like when I reimagined the traditional shadow puppet to a 3D angular and simplified shape. Some would say: this is not a shadow puppet. But to me, it is. And this is what I am excited to share with a new audience, who in turn will be reminded of traditional ways of storytelling.” 

Material dictatorship

It was despite the booming trends, colours, light and shapes of Salon de Mobile Milan that Jovana was one day drawn to a little booth, showcasing fine Chinese handicrafts. It was the booth of Lei Zhang. “It drew me in. It was all so comfortable to look at, I could finally rest my design brain” Jovana says. From the love for materials and crafts, a friendship grew between Lei, his classmate Chris, and Jovana, who now are all raising a family in this Chinese village and putting quiet and slow handicrafts on the map. 

When we came to China for this month, we intended to speak to a Chinese designer, native to the customs. Yet, we are excited to notice that the collaboration between different backgrounds here at Rong Library has given them a unique mandate in their practice. As it is exactly Jovana nót being Chinese that shapes a certain shamelessness in tinkering with traditional Chinese values and craftsmanship. The balance and rules thereby formed are what set them apart and what in fact extends the life of Chinese crafts, even beyond borders. And so here, a bed can be painted white. Here, a lion may be stroked the opposite direction. As long as it all starts with an understanding of the craft and its meaning.

And then, there is the many similarities. “We have silk rolling and hair decoration specific to China but there is actually so much overlap in the use of material. Material has its own logic, this is not interrupted by culture or country” Lei mentions. “Somehow no matter where we’re from, our ancestors have all figured out weaving and wood joinery. The material dictates.”  

Weaving through time

As we walk through an abandoned little street, towards the weavery, it is hard to imagine we are just a short way out from the largest city we have ever seen: Shanghai. Where flashy ads fill all surfaces and plastic consumption has taken on shapes that we would not recognise in the Netherlands: the most luxurious packaging is produced for single use, everything needs its own customised encasing; no exception. Products are everywhere. Copy-paste buildings everywhere. Electric cars are law. A very modern world magnified.

Exit through the giftshop

Time’s up, we have to go. The kids are gathered from the floor and we come together in the gift shop. One more question though: what must the Chinese ancestors be thinking of us, of this time period? Lei takes a minute and says: “We actually had a 100-year-old lady friend visiting our home recently. She opened our cabinets and drawers in the kitchen, saw our pots and glasses and said she had never seen so many things! We don’t need so many things in her opinion. I thought that was an exemplary difference in what we think is normal, I didn’t even think we were excessive at all.” His sentence has just wrapped up as Jonas shouts from across the room: “Do we want this tea set?!” He holds up a modern take on a traditional ceramic tea set of two tiny cups and a little pot on a wooden tray, made by one of their artists in residence. “Oh that’s beautiful…” I must admit. And so, with raised awareness of our even heavier bags and how easily also we manage to fill up our cabinets, we head to dinner.