Shanxi Architecture in the Wild

I first became curious about Shanxi’s ancient architecture thanks to the unexpected hit video game Black Myth: Wukong last year. During my July vacation, despite the scorching heat, I decided to make the trip. The moment I stepped off the plane from humid, sweltering Guangdong into Shanxi’s cool breeze, I finally understood why so many people come here to escape the summer heat.

Before this trip, my knowledge of Chinese architecture was minimal—just vague memories from a few undergraduate architectural history classes. So I binge-watched documentaries to prepare. I especially recommend Professor Wang Nan’s lectures, A Thousand Years, One Cave: Yungang Grottoes and A Thousand Years, One Pagoda: Yingxian Wooden Pagoda. They’re vivid, engaging, and Professor Wang herself is delightfully charming.

华严寺大雄宝殿（Photo credit to Bonnie Luo）

善化寺吉祥天女（Photo credit to Bonnie Luo）

My route took me from Taiyuan to Xinzhou, then on to Wutai Mountain, Dai County, and finally Datong—barely scratching the surface of Shanxi’s hundreds of temples. Even the humblest towns are full of surprises: towering wooden pagodas or pavilions suddenly appearing around a corner, intricate plaques and rooflines revealing layers of meaning. Shanxi’s wooden architecture, especially from the Tang dynasty, stands apart for its simplicity and weight, in contrast to the ornate splendor of the later Ming and Qing periods. Traveling with a modern design lens, I kept notes along the way:

1. Wooden Architecture: A Living Philosophy

Why does Chinese architecture favor wood, while Greek architecture relies on stone? This is the first question I remember from architectural history classes—the key to understanding East–West contrasts.

Beyond resource availability, Chinese architectural philosophy seeks harmony with nature, aiming for “vital energy and living spirit” in spatial layout. Wood feels alive, breathing with the seasons and the passage of time. Chinese builders viewed architecture as dynamic, renewed through repair and reconstruction, rather than striving for eternal permanence.

Greek architecture, by contrast, revered ideal proportions and geometric perfection—think of the “golden ratio” in sculpture—using stone to embody rational order and timeless beauty. This philosophical difference shaped what survives today: China’s wooden temples often perished, leaving underground tombs and burial goods (like the Terracotta Army, ritual bronzes, and jade) as the main surviving relics, emphasizing continuity of family power and status in the afterlife. Greece’s legacy, meanwhile, lies above ground—temples, sculptures, theaters, and civic spaces celebrating the relationship between gods, heroes, and people rather than individual afterlives. Their tombs, by comparison, were strikingly modest.

北齐壁画博物馆

山西省博物院舞乐俑

2. Roofs that Hold Aspirations

Temples once carried the collective imagination of the people, and intriguingly, their decorations varied by Buddhist sect. Take the Pure Land Temple in Yingxian, built for the Pure Land school, which teaches that salvation comes through chanting and visualizing the Western Paradise. The temple’s designers translated their vision of that paradise into the coffered ceiling (藻井) of the main hall: lavish, layered bracket sets evoking heavenly palaces.

Other temples, shaped by different doctrines, favored simpler designs, highlighting arhats or bodhisattvas instead. I used to find temples indistinguishable; now I see a logic. In modern terms, a temple’s layout is essentially an “experience design” for worshippers: guiding them through rituals like incense offering, alms, vegetarian meals, and evening chants. Both worshippers and deities are “users” of the space—the architecture mediates their encounter.

应县净土寺藻井（Photo credit to Bonnie Luo）

3. Centering the Divine

In my work, we constantly champion “human-centered design.” Stepping into Jinci Temple and ancient Buddhist sites, I felt disoriented: here, everything was “god-centered.”

Why is the opera stage placed at such an odd angle? Because it was meant to perform for the gods, not the audience. Many temple gates were intentionally framed so that deities could gaze at human comings and goings—a “picture frame” through which the sacred views the mundane. For visitors, these thresholds mark the transition from worldly life to the Buddha’s realm, creating a layered, serene approach to the sacred.

Though built for gods, these spaces inevitably reflect human imagination—our hopes for divine life projected outward. The Pure Land Temple’s celestial palaces remind me: perhaps gods don’t actually live in palaces or eat peaches of immortality, but we build them anyway (and smile at our own audacity).

善化寺大殿门框（Photo credit to Bonnie Luo）

4. A Cosmopolitan Era

One of the most surprising discoveries of this trip was learning how cosmopolitan Shanxi became during the Northern Wei dynasty. From the 5th century onward, Chinese, Indian (Buddhist), and Persian (Silk Road) influences mingled here. Murals, motifs, and sculptures in grottoes and temples reveal a cultural crossroads.

Merchants from Central and Western Asia brought glassware, silver, and new artistic styles to Pingcheng (modern Datong), shaping local fashion and music among the Xianbei and Han peoples. The vibrancy echoes the global flows of the early 20th century—migration, trade, and cultural exchange across communities and nations. Pingcheng truly embodied the ideal of “harmony in diversity, a world united.”

北齐壁画博物馆

Appendix

5. How did Buddhism become “Chinese”?

At the Shanxi Museum, I learned that Buddhism first entered China during the Wei–Jin and Northern–Southern dynasties, when Datong (then Pingcheng) was the capital. In an era of war and upheaval, people embraced Buddhist teachings, which promised that enduring present suffering could lead to bliss in the next life. As it localized, Buddhist art transformed: in the Yungang Grottoes, for instance, Buddha statues began wearing Han-style robes instead of Indian monastic garb, making them more relatable to local devotees. Ancient or modern, the logic of building trust is the same—even gods must feel “down to earth.”

忻州佛光寺东大殿内壁画—春日莫兰迪色的罗汉朋友们（Photo credit to Bonnie Luo）

6. The Arhats in Morandi Colors

Among all the temples, my favorite was Foguang Temple near Wutai Mountain. Its architecture is humble, its courtyard quiet and lush with green. Inside the East Hall, vivid arhat statues come to life with expressive faces and draped robes. It’s astonishing to see that artisans centuries ago already understood the subtle “Morandi” hues of spring and summer.

忻州佛光寺内院（Photo credit to Bonnie Luo）

Back to the basics: when breath becomes air

Over the past few months, I’ve been rethinking what brings me joy and learning to be more in tune with how my body feels. Back to the basics. I don’t have all the answers yet, but I’ve gathered enough courage to take small steps forward without full clarity—trusting that clarity comes from action, not speculation.

2025 has been the year I’ve made the most progress in understanding myself—owning both the good and the bad. It’s freeing to feel more honest, accepting, and comfortable in my own skin. The reassuring news is confirming, yet again, that my anchors are so easily accessible and simple: reading to explore and writing to make sense of it in my own way. These have quietly guide how I make decisions and how I spend my time.

The Philosopher’s Walk in Toronto, my favorite footpath in college (June 2025)

This past weekend, I picked up When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi because it somehow felt like the right timing and his writing was indeed deeply moving. Even though I’m not in the medical field, I felt strangely connected to Paul’s motivation for practicing neurosurgery and how he viewed his role as a medical practitioner. Like him, I also double majored in Literature and Life Science, and was struck by the way he brought a multidisciplinary lens to his work. His approach reminded me of what I strive for in my own role as a researcher: bringing more human-centered perspectives into how we apply emerging technologies to real-world problems.

Paul sees medical and neuroscience as the discipline where biology, morality, literature, and philosophy intersect. It never occurred to me that some of life’s biggest questions—about identity, death, and meaning—often arise most urgently in medical contexts. Paul originally considered studying biological philosophy, but chose to gain direct experience through practicing medicine instead. That tension deciding between abstract critique and hands-on impact echoes my own journey, where I’ve also chosen to be closer to applied research and product development rather than staying solely in behavioral science papers and literary theories. I wanted more direct impact and learnings from the messiness of implementation.

“The highest ideal was not saving lives—everyone dies eventually—but guiding a patient or family to an understanding of death or illness.” That line stayed with me. It’s not about heroism, it’s about guiding someone to make sense of the hardest things: what kind of life is worth living, and what quality of life is acceptable after treatment. In a strange way, it reminded me of my own work. Not because it’s equally weighty, but because research, too, is about helping teams understand perspectives that are often ambiguous, subjective, and deeply human. It’s about making space for hope, fear, love, beauty, envy, striving—things that don’t show up in dashboards or metrics, but are central to the experience of technology.

I was also struck by Paul’s reflection on the early meaning of the word patient: “one who endures hardship without complaint.” It’s a gentle reminder to meet people where they are. To see people not as problems to be solved, but as whole beings to be understood.

Toronto’s summer in King’s College Circle (June 2025)

Hope you’re enjoying the summer green as much as I am! (As you can tell, all the images are green and blue.) See you in the next post.

Keeping the Moore's Law alive

Semiconductors, better known as “chips,” might sound abstract if you don’t work in hardware. But they power nearly everything in our daily lives: phones, laptops, cars, and increasingly, the infrastructure behind AI. The real challenge today isn’t just about having enough data, it’s also about having the computing power to process it. Chips are the bottleneck, and producing them is staggeringly complex, capital-intensive, and geopolitically sensitive.

Like many people in tech, I’ve heard the word “semiconductors” thrown around all the time, but never really understood why they’re so central to everything. A few friends recommended the Chip War by Chris Miller last year and I finally finished it a few weeks ago—loved it. Here are four ideas that stuck with me:

1. Moore’s Law becomes an industry growth roadmap

Moore’s Law is often described as an observation: the number of transistors on a chip doubles roughly every two years, driving exponential increases in computing power.

What I didn’t realize is that it became a self-fulfilling growth roadmap for the semiconductor industry—a shared goal that governments, investors, and chipmakers aligned around. Despite concerns about physical and economic limits, companies organized roadmaps around making this "law" true, treating it less like physics and more like a shared mission. It’s a powerful example of how a narrative turns a forecast into a coordination mechanism for a global industry.

Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

2. Early demand rarely points to the final use case

When transistors were first invented, few people knew what to do with them. Beyond replacing bulky vacuum tubes, their potential seemed limited, much like how it’s cognitively hard for people to envision how AI could fundamentally change our lives today.

What changed everything was an unexpected early adopter: the U.S. military. Defense agencies and NASA needed compact, high-performing electronics for missiles and space exploration in the 1960s. That early niche demand gave semiconductors a launchpad to scale production. As costs dropped, chips moved into everyday consumer products: radios, calculators, and eventually, personal computers.

What struck me most was a surprising parallel with modern UX and product strategy: Fairchild Semiconductor didn’t just wait for demand to emerge. They actively imagined it, creating detailed blueprints of future consumer devices powered by chips before the market even existed. It was a way to reduce uncertainty and spark demand, much like today’s visionary product mockups or AI pitch decks that help people visualize what doesn’t exist yet.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

3. Why Intel fell behind in the AI race and Nvidia took the lead?

Intel led the personal computing revolution in the 1970s, driven by Bob Noyce’s bold bet on microprocessors and his belief in the future of personal computing, a vision few shared at the time. But in the AI and graphics era, Intel struggled to keep up, especially in advanced chip manufacturing and AI infrastructure, where Nvidia and TSMC moved faster and captured the momentum.

Despite early investments in foundational technologies like EUV tools that enabled GPU development, Intel was slow to pivot towards AI computing. Nvidia, on the other hand, recognized the opportunity early and bet aggressively on AI acceleration, developing CUDA and positioning its GPUs as the backbone of AI computing. What began as a graphics company transformed into a core infrastructure player for AI.

Beyond technical challenges and leadership strategy, company culture played a key role in this divergence. Intel’s structured, risk-averse environment prioritized predictability and incremental progress—a pattern consistent with the classic innovator’s dilemma, where incumbents hesitate to disrupt their own successful models even as new paradigms emerge. In contrast, Nvidia built a fast-moving, mission-driven culture with flat hierarchy and tight feedback loops. Under Jensen Huang’s leadership, the company is able to move quickly and shape the AI landscape. Building a timeless company isn’t about one single bold move, it’s about making the right bets at the right time, again and again.

Photo by TangChi Lee on Unsplash

4. How Asia broke into the high-value part of the supply chain?

When we think of semiconductors, we often picture Silicon Valley. But today, the center of gravity for advanced chip manufacturing lies in Asia.

Taiwan produces nearly 40% of the world’s new computing power each year. South Korea dominates memory chips, and Japan supplies critical materials like silicon wafers and specialty gases. Europe and the U.S. still lead in chip design tools, like ASML’s EUV machines and ARM’s architectures, but the most complex and valuable manufacturing steps are concentrated in Asia.

This shift wasn’t accidental. Asian governments took a proactive, hands-on approach, shaped by a Confucian-influenced philosophy of state-guided development. They funneled capital and pushed banks to fund strategic sector, hired US-trained engineers, kept their exchange rates undervalued, and secured tech transfer through partnership. In Taiwan and South Korea, support from the U.S. motivated in part by geopolitical rivalry with Japan also played a key role.

Today, power in chips isn’t just about who makes them, it’s also about who buys them. China, though behind in cutting-edge chips, controls massive demand for lower-end components. That market power gives it leverage, as it remains both the U.S.’s biggest customer and competitor. It’s a complex balance of dependency and rivalry, one shaped as much by market dynamics as it is by politics and culture.

It’s fascinating to learn how one of today’s most critical industries has been shaped not just by technology, but by the interplay of markets, culture, and geopolitics. As we explore emerging use cases for AI, the history of the chip industry offers a mirror—that technological shifts are rarely just about engineering, they’re about timing, narrative, and the systems we build around them.