When Yung Ho Chang returned to his native Beijing in 1993 after more than a decade of architectural training and practice in the United States, he was confronted by a society in dramatic flux. He found urban conditions and forms of development more easily characterized by absurdity than by habitability—Chen Xitong, for example, the corrupt mayor of Beijing in the 1990s, left a permanent mark on the city by decreeing that all new buildings bear a Chinese-style crown (later dubbed the “Chinese hat”), regardless of structure or design. Chang decided that if absurdity was the new normal, his