Architects don't compete with others, only with a hundred versions of themselves
She says she never felt like she was racing the rat race because she had no one to race against in the first place—architect Qi Shanshan's (戚山山) vitality doesn't come from self-discipline, but from asking herself first whether she actually likes something before deciding to do it.
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Female team members, measuring with their bodies, built truer than blueprints
The construction site of the Tengchong An zhi Ruo Su project was staffed almost entirely by women from the village. They threw bricks up along more than thirty meters and over one hundred steps, relaying materials up the stairs. Qi Shanshan discovered the villagers couldn't read blueprints, so she told them: ‘Listen to your body—turn when your body tells you to.’ They laid bricks by feel. When finished and checked against the blueprints, it was nearly identical. The sections built precisely according to specification, by contrast, looked stiff and lacked spirit.
— Qi ShanshanBrilliance comes from deviation and error, never from mere precision
She says she's always fought against the rigid rule of ‘must be perfectly horizontal and vertical.’ Why must stairs go straight up, then make a 180-degree turn? No one walks that way—mountain paths are walked on a slant. She believes all the beautiful moments come from error, deviation, misalignment—from the non-dogmatic places, not from precision itself. Refined technique is the foundation, but what truly moves people comes from respecting nature's irregularity, not from rules imposed by people.
— Qi ShanshanFear you direct at yourself is more powerful than external punishment
Her father disciplined her harshly: he'd strike her fingers when she played a wrong note, beat her even for a score of 99 out of 100, saying it was an attitude problem. After she moved to the US at 14, she finally escaped direct supervision. But she wrote her father's name on a piece of paper and taped it on her desk. Whenever she thought of getting up to play, she'd see the name and scare herself back into studying. She'd transformed his external strictness into a self-monitoring mechanism she maintained herself, not into simple consequence-free abandon.
— Qi ShanshanHow you carry yourself determines what energy the world sends back
Her mother was a dancer. Caring for several elderly relatives and her injured father at once, physically depleted to the point of collapse, ‘she stood right up, took a lipstick from her pocket, applied it, and went back to work’—because ‘no one was watching.’ Her logic: if you go to work without makeup and looking miserable, people see you as pitiful, and the feedback they send you is negative energy. With lipstick on, they see vitality, and the feedback that comes back is positive energy. ‘So in our family it became the norm: don't complain, don't spiral—and happiness just naturally follows.’
— Qi ShanshanWorking all night for satisfaction is different from racing against others
Harvard's architecture program kept her working from 9 AM to 5 AM. When tired, she'd run for half an hour and come back to keep working. She completed her degree before the phrase ‘racing the rat race’ became common, and she never felt like she was doing it. Knocking off at 5 AM, even exhausted, she was happy—she'd stopped actively because she was satisfied, not because she was forced to. She says those years didn't train her in design skills, but in ‘how to find satisfaction.’
— Qi ShanshanOne hundred meters of dining hall became the seed of rural transformation
In a poor village deep in the Qinling Mountains near Hanzhong, girls couldn't attend school because their families couldn't afford lunch fees. The school found a solution: join the soccer team, get free lunch. With no construction land available, the team converted a narrow hundred-meter-long old stable into a cafeteria, using food-service practices from train cars to have children line up in two queues. The team later made it to the provincial squad. The training camp brought parents for coaching, creating needs for housing and hotels, which drove expansion of the fields, reconstruction of the primary school, and a visitor center. Over six or seven years, one cafeteria rolled into complete rural revival, driven by a group of young girls who had no idea they'd changed their village.
— Qi ShanshanRest you've approved but don't actually want isn't rest, it's procrastination
The host reflected on her habit of thinking ‘I have this already—how do I add that to it?’ Qi Shanshan pointed out: this is playing it safe. You've approved downtime and fitness as ‘wonderful things’ in your head, but they're not things you actually want to do, which is why they're at the bottom of your to-do list, not the first thing you want to do when you wake up. Her logic isn't wanting-it-all—it's: ‘What do I actually love doing most?’ Then put that first in your day.
— Qi ShanshanAI makes renderings beautiful; humans do the work clients actually need
She doesn't oppose using AI—when she and her colleagues learned architecture twenty years ago, the parametric design they used was already a programming tool. What she opposes is blind hope—outsourcing all the analysis and thinking you should be doing yourself to AI, then not using the time saved to do something more valuable. She says the truly irreplaceable work is face-to-face communication with clients: where is their confusion, what do they want to become? That's deep work requiring you to feel the relationship between people and space on site. AI in the studio handles only surface-level work: making renderings beautiful.
— Qi ShanshanIn their own words · checked verbatim
I've actually been playing it safe the whole time. My default thinking is: I already have this—how do I add that to it?
我其实一直在打一个save play 我习惯的思维模式是 我已经有了这个 怎么把那个也补上
A Jie1:00
All the beautiful things—of course the foundation has to be there, you need refined skill—but all these highlights come entirely from error, deviation, misalignment.
所有的精彩的东西 当然这个基础要有 你要有精湛的记忆 但是所有的这些亮点 全都是从这些误差 偏差 错位
Qi Shanshan8:06
She stood right up, took a lipstick from her pocket, applied it, and went back to work.
她说她直接就站起来了 口袋里掏出一支口红一抹 继续去上班
Qi Shanshan18:11
So in our family it became the norm: don't complain, don't spiral—and happiness just naturally follows. Whatever troubles come up, you just let them drift away.
所以在我们家流行 不抱怨 不内耗 就很自然而然的开心 就是什么烦恼事情 就丢在脑后就好了
Qi Shanshan19:12
I say freewheeling creativity—it's built on a foundation of rigor. Only then can you truly be freewheeling. Without that rigor, you're just messy. That's not expressive, that's chaos.
我说天马行空 它是建立在严谨的基础之上的 它才能够天马行空 你没有这个严谨的这一层级 你就是乱七八糟 那个不是写意 那个是乱
Qi Shanshan51:24
She said: Shanshan, take three months off or half a year.
她说 珊珊 take three months off or half a year
Qi Shanshan57:26
My way isn't wanting it all—it's: I want this one thing. It's about discovering yourself.
我的话不是既要又要还要 我的话是我就要这个 就是去发现自己
Qi Shanshan1:06:33
Figures
| Hundred-meter dining hall length | ~100 meters | 28:16 |
| Age when moved to US | 14 | 10:06 |
| Age when returned to teach | 29 | 16:11 |
| Age when graduated from Harvard | 27.5 | 57:26 |
Glossary
- Safe play
- Choosing options with high certainty and low risk, rather than acting on your instinctive passion.
How to listen
Entrepreneurs and professionals who plan their lives using the logic of ‘hard work plus fixing weaknesses’ but have a nagging sense something's off, looking for a different frame of reference.