Funny Thought of the Week…

We just received a book from China! It’s a large, 400 page hardcover illustrated book with captions in Chinese and English about the Westlake Expo of 1929 recently published. (Thank you to our friend Tongrun!)

The Westlake Expo opened on June 6, 1929 lasting 137 days. There were 14,760,000 items in the exhibit with 20,000,000 visitors.  Liu Jipiao was the lead architect/designer dedicating 6 months of his life to organizing this event. He and others such as Lin Fengmian and Cai Yuanpei felt that China needed to see what the outside world could offer to build a stronger, more beautiful country in a time of transition and political upheaval.

I’ll have photos and descriptions for all to see soon! The book dedicates at least 3 chapters to Liu’s designs. What’s cool is that they have photos of both renderings and the actual constructed buildings!

I was talking to my mother, Gayook the other day about the new book. Funny thought of the week from my mom was this, “I remember my father telling me he exhibited in Westlake but I thought it was just a small exhibit like the ones he did in Newark, NJ when he was older.” It seemed funny to us looking through this book and realizing the breadth and scope of this expo.

More to come soon, I promise 🙂

Jenn