Colorful Lego building bricks — used to build imaginary cities, air force bases or fancy castles — are part of many people’s fond childhood memories.
Stephen Chao (趙子佑), a 27-year-old computer engineer, tried, but failed to let go of those memories. Giving full play to his childhood obsession, Chao has turned the small plastic parts into magical designs that have amazed the Lego world — and may have opened up a new avenue for promoting Taiwanese and Chinese culture.
“The bricks, their colors, are the magic that help me express the world I visualize in my head,” said Chao, who in August received one of the highest honors for thousands of local Lego fans — winning the largest contest ever held by the Lego Group in Taiwan.
Photo: Chiu Shao-wen, Taipei Times
Chao’s winning structure was a traditional temple fair, which he completed after spending more than a month collecting the Lego pieces needed and visiting temples around the country to talk to elderly people to get a better understanding of temple customs.
“It was not an easy task, but it was definitely rewarding,” he said of his first attempt to create a work based on Taiwan’s unique temple culture.
Chao managed to faithfully replicate the dragon pillars and exquisite wall paintings seen at many local temples using small bricks of different sizes, shapes and colors. He also incorporated shrines, red lanterns and even sausage vendors in the 40x40x45cm display.
The contest’s judges marveled at the detail of his work, Chao said, which cost him more than NT$11,000 to put together.
“Lego bricks are not toys for kids. They can be so much fun for both builders and viewers,” the Lego master said on his blog, which provides a platform for brick designers and fans to share their experiences.
As with many people, Chao began playing with Lego bricks when he was a child, building colorful castles with his friends.
He eventually decided to give them up because it was becoming an expensive hobby. He packed away the plastic blocks with other toys, determined to move on to more “grown-up” hobbies.
He could not seal away his passion, however, and it was rekindled in 2005, when he was watching a Japanese TV show that pit contestants building Lego brick structures.
“My dream castles, spectacular vessels and all the memories came flooding back,” he said.
Chao then took part-time jobs to support his interest and within a few years, he became a well-known architect in the world of fantasy.
In 2008, after exhibiting his masterpieces of medieval castles and villages at a show held at a miniature museum in Taipei, he was noticed by the Lego Group’s branch in Taiwan and invited to design a set of dragon boats to mark the Dragon Boat Festival.
A photograph of his boat — with its dramatic dragonhead, beards and a group of paddlers — was printed in brochures and posted on Lego’s design Web site as a model for users from around the world to aspire to.
Chao said the experience made him realize that the bricks could be a bridge between the East and the West.
“Westerners have a chance of appreciating Chinese art through Lego brick [structures],” he said.
“I will focus more on building Eastern-themed structures in the future,” he added.
Among the subjects he intends to tackle: Beijing’s Old Summer Palace, a noted emperor’s summer palace built in the 18th century, and West Lake (西湖), a popular resort area in Hangzhou, China.
Although Chao holds a full-time job, he is more excited about pursuing his hobby than building a professional career.
“I dream to own my kingdom now,” he said, ready to find more magic in the tiny plastic bricks that have allowed him fulfill his dreams with imagination.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching