Curiosity and Commitment

Abstract

I first visited Lukang in 1987, when I was a student at Tunghai University. My teachers told me that in Lukang I could encounter traditional Chinese culture firsthand. Aspiring calligrapher, tai-chi practitioner, and student of Chinese religion that I was, I could not miss it. I left the main commercial street (named for the Father of the Republic, Sun Yat-sen) and soon become lost amid narrow, twisting alleys. Reconstruction notwithstanding, Lukang maintained the qualities of “rot” that architect Bernard Tschumi (1994) has called the location of true architecture, built environments that contain the potential for dialogue, unlike monologic projects of place making, such as realizing Zhonghua (Chinese Civilization) through street names and historic sites.