Architect-turned-artist Wu Ningya. [PHOTO BY CHEN XINYU/CHINA DAILY]

Wu was born in a family of intellectuals in Luoyang, Henan province, on April 6, 1963, three years before the beginning of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), a chaotic period when his family suffered as the offspring of wealthy landlords.

To survive the suffocating social circumstances, the Wu family had covertly sought consolation from literature and art.

Wu's parents and grandparents, all avid readers of the classics and enthusiasts of the traditional arts, taught him about poetry, myths and legends, as well as calligraphy and ink painting.

"Their passion for refined and artistic living, even in hard times, exerted an indelible impact on me," recalls Wu, who collects artifacts from ancient Greece, prehistoric fossils and Gandhara Buddhist artworks, and owns a private library boasting over 30,000 rare books.

Yet in his younger years, Wu could not find enough books to satisfy his insatiable thirst for knowledge.

He was so curious and eager to understand the world around that he "almost grabbed anything with printed characters to read". He developed an exceptional capacity for memorizing all the texts in the Xinhua Zidian, a popular dictionary for generations of Chinese primary school students.