On a street in Manhattan’s Chinatown, there is a small shop full of customers called Fong On. It is a food shop and sells a kind of traditional Chinese food — tofu. However, two years ago, the owner of the shop Paul Eng faced lots of difficulties. He was the heir (继承人) to the tofu shop though he had no idea how to make tofu.

Mr. Eng’s grandfather learned to make tofu in the 1930s from a Chinese master when he arrived in Chinatown. He opened a small tofu shop and developed recipes (配方). His tofu had been popular in Chinatown for more than eighty years. However, as many Chinese people left Chinatown and foreigners moved in, many tofu shops closed down. In 2017, Mr. Eng’s parents closed their shop, too. The recipes, never written down, also disappeared with it.

But Mr. Eng had a chance to reopen the shop. Because Mr. Eng didn’t know how to make tofu, he decided to make the recipes in his own way. He turned to the Internet. “There are lots of videos. I try to match what I heard from our former workers to what people are doing in these videos,” he said.

In August, 2019, Mr. Eng’s tofu shop opened again. It serves not only fresh traditional tofu but also a kind of tofu pudding, which is a new product. The shop quickly attracts both old customers and young people. The old are happy to see fresh tofu come back, while the young want to try new food from a different culture.

Born in 1985 in Guangdong, Chen Guodong is a great architect (建筑师). He once studied in Japan, and he now enjoys a happy life building houses in Guizhou.

Different from most young people who would like to get a good job in big cities, Chen loves working in village areas where he can build houses and do field research at the same time. He loves his job of creating homes for people. “I have been thinking about what village areas will be like in the future and how living spaces that are built from wood can provide villagers with better service,” he said.

In 2017, Chen moved his design (设计) company from Japan to Liping, Guizhou. Liping is home to some of China’s most traditional villages and to all kinds of wooden buildings, which were built in ancient times. “I fell in love with wooden buildings when I was at university,” Chen said.

Chen always works hard. While working on a project, Chen usually remains on site (在现场) from start to finish. He and his team often live in a village for more than a year. In Huanggang village in Liping, Chen turned a wooden granary (粮仓) into a large public space. People can experience the peace of village life and also meet visitors there.

The house Chen made for Yang Hui, a teacher in a nearby village, was even more amazing. The house’s first floor, once used for raising animals, was turned into a living room, bedrooms and a kitchen, and its second and third floors have become a public space for teaching and guest rooms. Yang hopes her house will stay for 100 years. “I will use this place to hold activities to teach about traditional culture,” she said. Chen sees no reason why the home shouldn’t last that long, and he views his wooden houses as environmentally friendly and affordable (经济实惠的)!