Life丨Joining ingenuity with culture

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In the worst of times, Liu Wenhui couldn't afford the delivery fee for a package six years ago. Now, he stands proudly as one of Forbes China's top 100 outstanding craftsmen of 2024, having transformed his passion for ancient Chinese architecture into a cultural phenomenon. In a spacious plant based in Hangzhou, the capital of East China's Zhejiang province, the air hums with saws and smells of fresh wood. Workers meticulously craft ancient-looking building components like dougong (interlocking wooden brackets). Each person has a specific role — selecting wood, making components, sanding, polishing, and assembling the mortise-and-tenon joints. "We are busy producing a new array of mortise-and-tenon building blocks," says the man in his 40s. ▲ An array of mortise-and-tenon scale models developed by LiuWenhui. China Daily By simplifying designs and using plastic instead of wood, they've reduced the manufacturing costs of making toys that customers buy to build an ancient structure ………………………………