Rebuilding the past with paper

"It's fair to say that through this project, many German students learned that tangyang is a field worth studying," Wen says. Both sides are now discussing deeper, long-term cooperation.

The exhibition itself is unusual in that it was almost entirely created by young people.

"In this exhibition hall, we have a curation approach called 'My Space, Your Rules'," says Lin, the co-curator.

The curatorial team has an average age under 30. It includes junior staff members from the Prince Kung's Palace Museum, students from Tsinghua University, and students from the Technical University of Berlin.

Handwritten notes, hand-drawn illustrations, Q&A boards, and video interviews fill the rooms, reflecting a youthful lightness that nicely balances out the profundity behind the cultural relic's weight. Walking through the exhibition feels like stepping into a university classroom during a lively presentation.

"We wanted to show how young people today, especially young people from different countries, look at tangyang," Lin says.

When asked about why tangyang should be studied at all in the 21st century, when there is much more advanced modeling software and drawings, Wen emphasizes that tangyang still holds value in two distinct ways.

"First, it is a cultural relic. It records certain social and historical conditions of its time, so it's worth studying like any other artifact," she says.

Additionally, she considers it a window into ancient Chinese architectural design.

"What we're really doing is using tangyang to see how ancient people built houses, how they designed buildings, and how the people behind these structures lived and spent their days," she says.