On 20 September London time, the Nanjing Week of London Design Festival 2016 (LDF) kicked off, as a series of grand activities including the donation ceremony of Zhu Yingchu’s Book of Bugs were held in the British Library.

Hosted by the Nanjing Municipal Government, Nanjing Week opened during LDF, an annual celebration of international design, from 19th to 25th Sept. on the theme of “An Encounter between Renowned Metropolis of Oriental Culture and Western Capital of Creativity”. The activity aimed to increase the global presence of Nanjing culture and the city’s creative enterprises, so as to further promote Nanjing’s visibility and reputation on the world stage.

As an important partner of Nanjing Week, Sanpower Group, together with its established English department store brand House of Fraser, spared no effort to support the activity, hoping to serve as a bridge for the cultural exchanges between China and England with its own humble contributions. The donation of Book of Bugs was among the activities under the auspices of Sanpower Group and House of Fraser whose CFO Colin Elliot attended the ceremony in London, showing his strong support for the dialogue between Chinese and English culture.

 

In the opening ceremony of Nanjing Week, Zhu Yingchun, a book binding designer from Nanjing, donated the special edition of his new work Book of Bugs and other book series he designed. In his Book of Bugs, not a single Chinese character was present, even on the cover. Instead, it’s crawling with over 10,000 unique “bug characters”, all “handiworks” by the various insects from his atelier. 

For years, Zhu kept an intimate relationship with the bugs, snails and spiders in the vegetable garden outside his workroom. Those cute little “neighbors” reminded him of his childhood and became his friends. The variegated tracks they left on leaves, branches and eaves resembled pictographs in human culture, kindling sparks of inspiration in the extremely sensitive artist’s mind. “I have been wondering what the better designs are like; now the bugs tell me in their language that nature is the best designer.”

During the past years, Zhu derived thousands of “bug characters” from the life journey of those small creatures to whom he also paid his respect in that special way. Finding a convergence between exquisite book designing and the “bug writing”, he composed the Book of Bugs.

The book that “perplexed readers completely” has been included in the permanent collection of the British Library and would be on display for visitors from across the world. Sara, curator of the Chinese collection at the British Library, regarded the book which she thought was full of nature-inspired edification as a meaningful supplement to the Library’s collections. “In the British Library, Mr. Zhu’s work will not only be appreciated by the modern audience, but also be maintained permanently for the later generations.”

Zhu Yingchun’s work has been awarded for multiple times “the Most Beautiful Book of China” and “the Most Beautiful Book of the World”. With unique bindings that are in perfect harmony with the contents, the books he designed attracted much attention, increasing the influence of Chinse book design in the world. In the opening ceremony of Nanjing Week at the British Library, the organizing committee also displayed Zhu’s other design works to the English specialists and scholars.

The book “written by bugs” has come out of Nanjing to the British Library, demonstrating to a larger audience the “micro-cosmos” of insects. The bug writing represented an intriguing communication between literature and natural art. It not only showcased the glamour of a harmonious relationship between nature and the Oriental art, but also blazoned the natural beauty of Nanjing.