The Torso of Time: Yongsong Huang and the Echo of Things Chinese

In the relentless velocity of the twentieth century, where modernization was often synonymous with the erasure of the past, Yongsong Huang stood as a custodian of memory. For over four decades, the founder and art director of Echo of Things Chinese (Hansheng) has dedicated his life not merely to cataloging history, but to breathing life into the fading pulse of Chinese folk culture.

At over seventy, Huang possesses a vitality that belies his age—a twinkle in the eye born of perpetual discovery. Yet, his journey began with a crisis of cultural identity. As a young student of modern sculpture in Taiwan, Huang was poised to leap into the Western art world. It was a time when Taiwan was transforming rapidly, shedding its skin to accommodate the industrial age.

The pivot point came through a profound metaphor offered by a teacher: traditional culture was like a severed head left behind in the dust, while modern arts were feet running blindly forward. The body was broken. To survive, culture needed a “torso”—a connector to rejoin the head and the feet, allowing the organism to move forward as a whole. Inspired by this vision and his partner Wu Meiyun, Huang abandoned the allure of the avant-garde to become that connector. In January 1971, the first issue of Echo was published, marking the beginning of a forty-four-year odyssey to document five millennia of heritage.

Yongsong Huang in the studio where the magazine Echo of Things Chinese is produced. The store and studio is known as “Echo Lane” in Taipei, Taiwan. The gourd-shaped carving is the studio’s sign.

The Gene Bank of Aesthetics

Echo is not a standard publication; it is an anthropological intervention. Huang describes their methodology as “making a mountain out of a molehill.” This implies a forensic attention to detail where the smallest artifact—a knot, a clay toy, a recipe—is treated with the gravity of a monumental discovery.

The magazine functions as a “gene bank” for Chinese culture. In an era where the populace was enamored with foreign imports, Huang and his team turned their gaze inward, excavating the “invaluable cultural genes” buried under the dust of modernization. This process was rigorous. Information had to be verified, photography had to capture the tactile soul of the object, and the layout had to translate profound history into accessible visual language.

This dedication to the microscopic details of folk art reveals a philosophy of “basic necessities.” Recently, Huang has organized these cultural genes into a vast taxonomy: five classes, six categories, and dozens of items ranging from food to shelter. It is a systematic attempt to map the DNA of a civilization before it evaporates.

The Flavor of Time

The preservation of culture is often synonymous with the preservation of flavor. Huang draws a sharp distinction between the sterility of modern food science and the organic wisdom of ancestral preservation.

Modernity relies on chemical additives to arrest decay—a violent halt to natural processes. In contrast, traditional methods like drying, pickling, and marinating work with time, transforming ingredients rather than freezing them. “These methods often actually enhance the food flavors,” Huang notes, citing the complexity of steamed rice with cured sausages or the profound depth of traditional pickles.

For Huang, a bowl of pickled vegetable soup offers a sensory experience superior to the most expensive vintage wines. It is a flavor profile that carries the weight of history, a “cultural experience” that unfolds on the tongue—smooth, complex, and resonant. It is the taste of a civilization that understood how to negotiate with nature rather than dominate it.

In addition to a magazine, Huang publishes books about traditional Chinese culture and handicrafts.

The Lost Encyclopedia and the Modern Void

Huang’s work also addresses a historical trauma: the loss of technical confidence. He points to the year 1637, a pivotal moment in global intellectual history. In Europe, René Descartes published Discourse on the Method, laying the foundation for Western cognitive science and dualism. In China, the scholar Song Yingxing published Tiangong Kaiwu (The Exploitation of the Works of Nature), the world’s first encyclopedic record of agricultural and handicraft techniques.

While Descartes steered the West toward abstract rationalism, Tiangong Kaiwu celebrated practical engagement with the material world. Tragically, the text was lost in China during the Qing Dynasty, only surviving in Japan and Europe. Its absence contributed to a stagnation in Chinese craftsmanship and a subsequent crisis of confidence when faced with Western industrial might.

By reviving interest in these lost texts and techniques, Huang argues that traditional crafts are not obsolete relics but repositories of functional wisdom. He cites the art of paper folding, which holds the geometric principles used in modern heart stents, and Chinese herbal medicine, which focuses on systemic harmony rather than symptomatic suppression. The “backward” past, upon closer inspection, holds the keys to a more holistic future.

The Warmth of the Hundred Families

Perhaps the most poignant distinction Huang makes is between Imperial art and Folk art. Museums and auctions often fetishize Imperial objects—luxury utensils made of jade and gold. Yet, Huang argues, a gold bowl functions exactly the same as a ceramic one. Imperial art is the art of excess.

Folk art, conversely, is the art of warmth and human connection. Huang illustrates this with the tradition of the “Hundred-Family Vest.” When a child was born in a village, the grandmother would solicit scraps of used cloth from neighbors. Each scrap came with a blessing—for health, wealth, or wisdom. Sewn together, the vest became a physical manifestation of communal love, a patchwork armor of good will.

“I believe this single piece of clothing is more valuable than the robes of a crown prince,” Huang asserts. It is an aesthetic grounded in functionality and imbued with the spirit of the collective—a “warmth” that modern industrial design struggles to replicate.

A corner of Echo Lane where tea is served on natural raw wood furniture, traditional Chinese New Year paintings published by Echo magazine hang nearby.

Returning to the Source

Today, Huang’s mission has expanded to the very soil of the homeland. In Suzhou, the city of water gardens, he is spearheading the “Eight Fresh Aquatic Plants” project. Plants like water shields, fox nuts, and arrowheads—staples of Tang and Song Dynasty poetry—are disappearing from the modern diet and landscape.

His team spends years cultivating these species and consulting elder chefs to recover the lost culinary knowledge associated with them. This is not merely botanical conservation; it is an act of restoring the coordinates of home.

“Traditional culture is like our elder generations,” Huang reflects. To understand the past—what ancestors ate, wore, and touched—is to build a roadmap for the future. In a world of displacement, these preserved tastes, crafts, and stories ensure that when the youth inevitably feel the pang of homesickness, they will still recognize what “home” looks like.