Attendees try out a product at a carpentry stall of the expo. [PHOTO BY GAO ERQIANG/CHINA DAILY

Ancient wisdom

Huang Lei, a designer with more than 20 years of experience in building industrial tools, took his new company and business ideas to the expo. He named his company Muniuliuma, or "wood ox and flowing horse" in Chinese, which refers to the famous wooden ox invented by the legendary military strategist Zhuge Liang during the Three Kingdoms Period (220-280).

Developed to transport army provisions, this mechanical creation was a fine example of the ingenuity of ancient Chinese engineering and woodworking, explains Huang.

To showcase this to the public, Huang developed a series of workshops where children and grownups could learn how to build small, articulated wooden models, albeit not as complicated as the famous wooden ox. In the past four years, Huang and his colleagues have taken these workshop programs to schools, communities and shopping malls.

"The best way to tell a story is to get people to experience it themselves," he says.

At the expo, Huang guided participants as they pieced together mortise and tenons joints using hot glue as part of the process of building the wooden models that came in different animal shapes.

"I am quite clumsy and not confident of working with my hands, so to make a rabbit model that can actually walk is a lot of fun even though there are only a few steps involved," says Zhang Lan, a participant of the workshop. "Also, you can take home what you just made so that every time you look at the rabbit, you remember the sense of achievement you got from building it."

Contact the writer at zhangkun@chinadaily.com.cn