A sense of community

Coexisting with nature is one of Liu's principles towards architecture. Each season, new flowers will bloom in the poetry garden and yard, and some surfaces of the bookstore and cafe will be covered by climbing plants. "The houses will keep changing," says Zhang, the rotating president.

The new bookstore houses nearly 20,000 books, including poetry and books about local history and culture. A variety of cultural creative products are for sale, 60 of which are created specifically for this bookstore, including refrigerator magnets, postcards, bags and copper products.

"We are exploring what we can do for poetry. In our bookstore in Shaxi town, Dali Bai autonomous prefecture, we have a poetry tower, and in Mengzi, we have a poetry bell tower. Here, we've created a poetry garden, which is part of this bookstore and also an independent architectural structure," Zhang says about their branches in Yunnan.

Liu believes that architecture "can shape human behavior and create an atmosphere, providing a sense of tranquility and poetry, evoking empathy and kindness, and fostering a sense of community with shared joys and sorrows."

When the bookstore and the cafe close, the poetry garden stays open to the public, becoming a square where villagers gather after dinner.

"When I was here in April, I heard them chat in the local dialect and the children running around. Sometimes they read the lines on the seat backs by German-language poet Rainer Maria Rilke or British-born poet W.H. Auden, or played cards," Zhang says.

"We put our bookstores in the countryside to build a public space for villagers. Here, this goal has been achieved thanks to the ingenious design," he says.

The poem balloons were retrieved just in time after traveling in high winds for several hours.