XENNI
齊 間
Not an exhibit. Something people still do.
Living Heritage, Not Museum Pieces
BEIJING NEW YORK HONG KONG
SCROLL
Salon 01 · The Four Idle Pursuits of the Song · 26 Sep, Zhuanta Hutong · applications open✦Journey 01 · A Day at Tianzhen · 2 Oct, Tianjin✦Salon 02 · Autumn Flowers · 24 Oct, Frost's Descent✦Salon 03 · Reading Winter by Scent · 21 Nov, Light Snow✦Lin School floral art Level One · two apprentices certified✦United by Art · Fulfilled through People · Beijing · New York · Hong Kong✦
NEWS · 动态

Latest from the Team

Salon

Salon 01 · A Taste of Song — applications open

Incense, whisked tea, a hanging scroll and flowers, around one long table in a Zhuanta Hutong courtyard. By application, bilingual, for international educators in Beijing.

2026.09.26 Certification

Lin School floral art, Level One — two apprentices certified

After a term in Suzhou, Danielle and Bingfei passed the Level One examination. Certificates were issued by the China Floral Art Heritage Association and signed by Zhang Yanya.

2026.08.29 Journey

Journey 01 · A Day of Taiji

Following our visit, the first trip proper: a day at Tianzhen Garden in Wuqing, Tianjin, with the fourth-generation holder of Li-style Taiji.

2026.10.02 Past

Made by Hand · Origins, part one — mother-of-pearl workshop

Our first public lecture-workshop, held at PKU Science Park, led by inlay craftsman Zou Yu. Every participant finished a piece of their own.

2026.04.18 Field note

A Day at Tianzhen Garden · notes from a visit

A long conversation at Tianzhen Garden with the fourth-generation holder of Li-style Taiji, about how a culture starts happening again in young people.

2026.05
THE TEAM · 团队

Who We Are

XENNI was started by students working across different fields and incubated at Peking University. We have no wish to call ourselves protectors. A civilisation does not need protecting; it needs to be understood, continued, and given a meaning that belongs to now.

The XENNI team

Eight of us, from Tsinghua and Peking University, brought together by one conviction — that heritage does not belong only in museums. From art history and design to law, management and film, each of us works at it a different way.

Meet the whole team · About XENNI →
JOIN US · 活动与报名

The Next Few Tables

Twelve seats to a salon; journeys are capped. Pick one, fill in the form or scan, and we confirm on WeChat.

Past work · what we've done →
Full schedule →
The Four Idle Pursuits · seasonal sweets
Open · Salon 01
The Four Idle Pursuits of the Song
A Taste of Song
9.26 Saturday afternoon · Beijing

Tea, incense, flowers, painting — the Song made a whole afternoon of four idle things. Twelve seats, four teachers working alongside you. Not a demonstration.

Seats
12
Price
¥398 ¥899
Note
First-table price, this one only
Mount Tiantai
Salon 05 · Journey 4–7 Feb 2027 · four days, three nights · KAI Tiantai, Hoshino Resorts
New Year in the Mountains
New Year in the Mountains

Not coming to China to watch a New Year, but staying up in the mountains and actually keeping one.

¥12,999
per person · four days, three nights
See the journey →
STEP ONE
Pick a table; check the date and price
STEP TWO
Fill in the form here, or scan for the online one
STEP THREE
Add us on WeChat to confirm your seat and pay
Apply now →
Beijing
京
WHERE IT STARTED · 发源地

Beijing

Beijing, China

Rooted in the Tsinghua and Peking University communities, in the old red-walled hutongs: five crafts practised as an ordinary habit. Workshops weekly, exhibitions monthly, certification yearly.

Taiji Floral Art Tea Guqin Incense
New York
纽
2026 TOUR · 巡展

New York

New York, USA

University tour, workshops and exhibition. September 2026, at Columbia and NYU — a Chinese tradition shown as something still alive.

Columbia NYU Sep 2026 · under way
艺
WHAT WE DO · 服务

Where We Can
Take You

United by Art · Fulfilled through People

Some of Chinese culture you can see through glass. Some of it you only come to know by sitting down beside someone who actually does it.

We do three things: an afternoon at a table, a few days away, and a long stretch of study under a teacher. Below is what we have done, and what we can build for institutions.

Three kinds

FOR INDIVIDUALS
See what's coming →
01
Salon
Gatherings
One afternoon · 12 seats · monthly, by the solar terms

Incense, whisked tea, a hanging scroll, flowers — around one long table. The people who make these things are in the room, and afterwards everyone sits and talks. No background needed.

Next: 26 Sep, The Four Idle Pursuits of the Song · Heyuan space, Zhuanta Hutong, Beijing
¥899
Per table · 12 seats
02
Journey
Journeys
One to four days · 10–14 people · out of the city

Not a tour group. A small journey built around particular people, a particular craft and a particular place — you stay, and you live a day or several the way they do.

2 Oct · A Day at Tianzhen, Tianjin　｜　Feb 2027 · New Year in the Mountains, KAI Tiantai
[ price TBC ]
Tiered by length
03
Learning
Apprenticeship
A course · with a teacher, homework and an examination

Genuinely studying under a master. Lin School floral art, Level One, is ten lessons with a certificate from the association; the seven-day intensive is for 14–18s, running each spring and summer from 2027.

Corresponds to L3 and L4
[ price TBC ]
See L1–L4 →
SELECTED WORK · 做过的

Where We've Been

Every event is a meeting, and every meeting leaves something behind. What follows is both our past work and the evidence of what we can do.

Also: Spring Papercut Exhibition (Tsinghua Art Museum, 7 days, 600+ visitors) · Tea Ceremony Workshop (PKU Centennial Hall) · Heritage and Contemporary Life (Tsinghua) · the Tianzhen Garden field note All past work →
FOR INSTITUTIONS · 机构合作

Built for Schools and Institutions

The same masters and the same method, rearranged around your space, your numbers and your timetable. That is how the projects at Tsinghua Art Museum, PKU Science Park and PKU Centennial Hall were built.

Private salons
Away-days, client hosting, brand collaborations
School programmes
Culture courses and co-curriculars for international schools
Exhibitions
Venue partnerships and heritage-themed shows
Touring abroad
Sep 2026 · Columbia and NYU
Come once. Decide afterwards how far you want to go.
26 Sep · The Four Idle Pursuits of the Song · first table ¥398 · limited seats, by application
XENNI INTERNATIONAL SALON · 齊間国际文化雅集

Gatherings & Journeys

Our gatherings follow the solar terms — one a month, sometimes in the city, sometimes well outside it.
One table a month, following the solar terms.

The Four Idle Pursuits of the Song
Salon
Open SALON 01 · BY APPLICATION
A Taste of Song

The Four Idle Pursuits of the Song

Incense, whisked tea, a hanging scroll and a vase of flowers — around one long table in a hutong courtyard
Saturday 26 September 2026 · 14:30 – 18:00
Heyuan space · 82 Zhuanta Hutong, Xicheng, Beijing
Bilingual · for international educators in Beijing · limited seats
Apply → Online form Larisa's WeChat QR code or scan to add
Larisa, our assistant

What's Coming

THE SERIES · 2026 — 2027
One a month, by the solar terms
Date
Solar term
No.
Title
What & where
Status
How to join
09.26
Autumn Equinox
Salon 01
The Four Idle Pursuits of the Song
A Taste of Song
Incense · Tea · Scroll · Flowers　Heyuan space, Zhuanta Hutong · 14:30–18:00
Open
By application
10.02
TBC
Journey 01
A Day at Tianzhen
A Day of Taiji
Taiji 太极 · UNESCO heritage　Tianzhen Garden · Wuqing, Tianjin
Preparing
Apply once open
10.24
Frost's Descent
Salon 02
Autumn Flowers
Chinese floral art · autumn vessels　[ venue TBC ]
Opening soon
Waitlist on WeChat
11.21
Light Snow
Salon 03
Reading Winter by Scent
Scent of Winter
Incense · scent and stillness · blend your own　[ venue TBC ]
Opening soon
Waitlist on WeChat
12.19
Winter Solstice
Salon 04
Sitting Around One Table
Gathering Around the Table
A gathering for solstice and Christmas　[ venue TBC ]
Opening soon
Waitlist on WeChat
2.04–07
2027
Salon 05
New Year in the Mountains
Four days, three nights　Mount Tiantai · KAI Tiantai · Hoshino Resorts
Opening soon
¥12,999 · Details →
HOW TO JOIN
Two Ways In
01 · APPLY HERE
Fill in the form on the event page and it goes straight to your XENNI account. Larisa replies with the decision; once you attend, it counts towards your record and your hours.
Apply →
02 · WECHAT
Scan left for the online form, or right to add Larisa on WeChat for questions and the waitlist.
Application QR code
Apply
Larisa's WeChat QR code
Larisa, our assistant
←Back to Schedule
GATHERINGS / Salon 01 · A Taste of Song
The Four Idle Pursuits of the Song
QIJIAN INTERNATIONAL SALON
BEIJING · NEW YORK · HONG KONG
01
A Taste of Song

The Four Idle Pursuits of the Song

Incense, whisked tea, a hanging scroll and a vase of flowers — around one long table in a hutong courtyard
Saturday 26 September 2026 · 14:30 – 18:00
Heyuan space · 82 Zhuanta Hutong, Xicheng, Beijing
BY APPLICATION BILINGUAL
Apply for a seat →
THE INVITATION · 引子

On the last Saturday of September we set one long table. We make sweets, drink tea, look at flowers, warm some incense — and leave time to sit and talk properly.

Tea, incense, flowers and painting: the Song called them the four idle pursuits. We start there. One afternoon, four old habits, and a day that runs a little slower.

On the last Saturday of September, we're setting a long table. There'll be tea, sweets to make, flowers and incense. And plenty of time to sit around the table and talk.

闲
SALON CONVERSATION · 席间对谈
What does a slower life
mean today?
What did idleness mean to them,
and what could it mean to us
That is the question on the table this time.
I · THE FOUR PURSUITS

The Four Idle Pursuits

In the Song, a decent afternoon was built from four things: one censer, one bowl of tea whisked on the spot, one scroll hung for the day, one vase on the table. Together they turn a room into somewhere worth staying.

Incense
Incense
One censer throughout, setting the air of the room
Whisked Tea
Tea
A bowl each, whisked by your own hand
The Scroll
Painting
One Song painting, the reason for the day
Flowers
Flowers
One arrangement made at the table, while we talk
Burning incense, whisking tea, hanging paintings, arranging flowers — four idle pursuits, and none of them a burden on the household.
— Wu Zimu, Dreams of Splendour of the Eastern Capital, Song dynasty
Seasonal Sweets, Song Style
II · MAKING AT THE TABLE

Seasonal Sweets, Song Style

The sweets are what everyone makes together. Pressed in wooden moulds into lotus, peach and blossom shapes, barely sweet, following the season. The technique borrows from wagashi; the shapes and flavours follow the Song calendar.

No experience needed. Whatever you make is boxed up and goes home with you.

Zhang Donghua
LED BY
Zhang Donghua
Senior heritage craft instructor · senior practitioner, Chinese floral art
Certified tea practitioner and tea taster
III · A FLORAL MOMENT

The Time It Takes for One Stem

Chinese floral art entered the national heritage register in 2008. The craft itself predates the register by a thousand years and more.

HOSTED BY
Han Danning
Peking University Health Science Center
XENNI · student of Lin School floral art
 
Li Bingfei
XENNI
Lin School floral art, Level One (certified Aug 2026)
One stem
IV · A GUQIN INTERLUDE
One Piece on the Guqin
Lu Yixing Apprentice · studies under the twelfth-generation holder of the Guangling guqin school
V · THE AFTERNOON

On the day · 14:30 – 18:00

14:30
Arrival · welcome tea
Arrival
15:00
The table opens
Opening the Table
15:15
Making the sweets
Making at the Table
16:00
Whisked Tea
Tea at the Table
16:25
One stem
A Floral Moment
16:45
One Piece on the Guqin
A Guqin Interlude　The piece ends, the table resets, tea and sweets come out.
17:00
Conversation
Salon Conversation　Everyone says something on the question of the day, then the talk goes where it goes.
17:50
The table closes
Closing
Salon
VI · WHO SITS AT THIS TABLE

Who Is at This Table

This one is for international educators in Beijing — teachers and heads of department at international schools, admissions and programme staff, counsellors, and anyone running cultural or co-curricular work.

Bilingual throughout. No background in tea, flowers or Chinese is needed. What matters is curiosity — and being someone the person beside you is glad to have met.

APPLY TO JOIN

Apply for a Seat

Seats are limited and given by application.
Seats are limited and allocated by application.
APPLY HERE · 站内申请
Your application goes into your XENNI account; Larisa replies with the decision.
Attending counts towards your learning record.
SCAN TO APPLY · 扫码
Scan to apply, or add our assistant on WeChat
Application QR code
Apply
Apply
Online form · v.wjx.cn
Larisa's WeChat QR code
Larisa · XENNI
WeChat · Larisa Lin
Scan to add on WeChat
When you write, please tell us: your name, what you do, where you work, your nationality or cultural background, and why you would like to join.
青绿山水 · blue-and-green landscape on silk
SEASONAL OBJECTS · 岁物

One Thing
a Season

Four a year. Keep going and they make a sequence.

Not a gift box. Each season we choose one Chinese object that belongs to that season, numbered, with a card naming its maker and method — and a short piece of our own writing about why it is worth keeping.

青绿山水 · BLUE-AND-GREEN LANDSCAPE, INK AND COLOUR ON SILK
INTRODUCING · No.01 一叶经年 · A Leaf Through Time

Four things in one cup

一杯茶里的四件事

This is a pressed cake of White Peony, made in 2023 in Fuding, Fujian. What makes it particular is not the number on the wrapper. It is that this one cup holds, at the same time, a maker, a place, a craft — and a stretch of time nobody can go back and get again.

PLACE
一方水土
MAKER
一位匠人
CRAFT
一门技艺
A pressed cake of 2023 White Peony in its box
No.01 SPRING 2026

White Peony, 2023

白牡丹 · 福鼎
Mei Xiangjing · Fuding, Fujian
MAKER
Mei Xiangjing 梅相靖 · born 1945
ORIGIN
Bailiu village, Diantou · Fuding, Fujian
GRADE
White Peony 白牡丹 · one bud, one or two leaves
PRESSED
2023 · [ edition size TBC ]
¥599
reference retail · [ our price TBC ]
Reserve No.01 →
The 2023 White Peony set
XENNI × Mei Xiangjing · the 2023 set — two cakes, the cards, the wrap place · maker · craft
Mei Xiangjing in the tea garden
Mei Xiangjing 梅相靖 · 福鼎
I · THE MAKER

The maker

匠人

Born 1945 in Bailiu village, Diantou, Fuding, into a tea family — his grandfather Mei Bozhen was a pioneer of the Fuding white tea export trade.

In 2011 he was recognised as a provincial holder of the Fuding white tea processing craft; in December 2012 he entered the fourth national batch as a representative holder of white tea processing.

The other thing he has spent these years doing is giving the craft away — training growers through a cooperative, and leaving the industry the picking and withering standards he worked out himself.

Neither fired nor rolled

THE CRAFT · 一门技艺
So few steps that everything rests on the maker's judgement.
Withering　萎凋
The fresh leaf is spread out and loses water slowly, in sun and wind. Most of what the tea will smell and taste like is settled here.
Drying　干燥
Finished over charcoal or at low heat, down to a moisture level that will keep for years. No pan-firing, no rolling.

Sunlight, humidity, wind, and the different state of the leaf on any given day all have to be felt rather than measured. That is the whole of the craft, and why so much of it is judgement.

晒
Seven parts sun, three parts fire.
七分晒，三分焙。
Less intervention, more going along with it. The craft is knowing when to step in — and when not to.
— MEI XIANGJING
II · THE PLACE

Fuding, where the
hills meet the sea

福鼎 · 山海相接

Fuding sits in the north-east of Fujian, warm and often under fog, and it is one of the most important places white tea comes from at all.

The white in white tea is the silver down on the surface of the bud. Unlike the teas that are rolled and fired, this one is left as far alone as possible — the leaf changes in time, air and sunlight rather than in a pan.

Tea is a fine tree of the South.
茶者，南方之嘉木也
— LU YU, THE CLASSIC OF TEA
The garden at first light
The garden, at first light · 少干预，多尊重

White tea, on one page

III · 白茶一页读懂
One of the six classes of Chinese tea — and the one made with the least done to it.
FOUR GRADES · 四个等级
白毫银针
SILVER NEEDLE
Single buds; the most down, the clearest scent.
白牡丹THIS ONE
WHITE PEONY
One bud with one or two leaves — scent and flavour in balance.
贡眉
GONG MEI
Made from the buds and leaves of the older village varietals.
寿眉
SHOU MEI
More leaf than bud; the thickest in the mouth.

Because so little is done and so little water is left, white tea keeps. There is an old way of putting it — a year a tea, three years a medicine, seven years a treasure — and what it is really describing is that the tea goes on changing while it sits.

Young, it is fresh and clear. Kept a long time, the scent and the body settle down and turn into another register altogether.
一年茶、三年药、七年宝

Detail of a blue-green landscape
IV · 二〇二三年不会再有
2023 will not be made again.

This cake became tea in 2023. Every year since, it has gone on changing slowly. That year's weather, that year's leaf, that maker's hands, and all the time since are part of what is now in the cup.

Time is the final craftsman.　时间，是最后一位制茶人。
Detail of a blue-green landscape
THE COLOUR · 色 · 绀青
Deep as indigo. Pale as moon-white.
深处近绀 · 浅处近月白

Very deep, very low in saturation, close to indigo. In dim light the box reads almost black; under a lamp the blue comes back, and the gold with it. A colour that has to be looked at twice.

绀青　金　月白
V · HOW TO BREW

How to drink it

如何喝这一杯
TEA · 茶量
5 – 7 g
WATER · 水温
95 – 100 °C
VESSEL · 茶器
Gaiwan or teapot
盖碗 / 茶壶

Rinse quickly, then pour short and lengthen each steep as you go. Don't judge it on the first cup — what is interesting about a kept white tea is how it changes from one steep to the next. After several, the spent leaf can go in a pot and be simmered.

SMELL · OBSERVE · TASTE · WAIT　闻香 · 观色 · 入口 · 候回甘
The tea table
茶器一席 · the tea table
Bitter at first, sweet after swallowing — this is tea.
啜苦咽甘，茶也。
— LU YU, THE CLASSIC OF TEA
饮
WHY THIS ONE · 齊間为什么选它
Some traditions are not meant to be displayed.
They are meant to be drunk.
We chose it not for its year but because one cup can hold a place, a maker, a craft and a stretch of time at once — and because it is not a tradition behind glass. It is something from 2023 that can still be opened, brewed and shared today.
有些传统
不是用来陈列的
是用来喝的
IN THE PARCEL

What comes
with it

Three things travel together. The object is the point; the other two are so you know what you are holding.
一物 · 一人 · 一文
i
The object, numbered
The cake itself, marked No.01 of the series.
物
ii
A card for the maker
Who made it, where, and by what method.
人
iii
A page of our writing
Why this object, and why this season.
文

The series

FOUR A YEAR
Numbered from No.01 onward; the sequence runs through the seasons without restarting.
NO.
SEASON
THE OBJECT
MAKER
STATUS
No.01
SPRING
春
White Peony, 2023
白牡丹 · 福鸼
Mei Xiangjing 梅相靖 · Fuding, Fujian
NOW
No.02
SUMMER
夏
Heritage Porcelain
青磁 · 窑口待定
[ maker and kiln to be chosen ]
TO COME
No.03
AUTUMN
秋
Heritage Incense
香 · 材料待定
[ maker and material to be chosen ]
TO COME
No.04
WINTER
冬
Annual Special
年终一件
[ vessel, textile, or paper and ink ]
TO COME
Objects after No.01 are named but not yet made; we list them here so the sequence is legible, and we do not take the year's money in advance.

Two ways to take one

HOW
One object
Take the season that interests you and nothing more. No.01 is available now.
The whole year
Four objects, No.01 through No.04, as each season comes. One sequence, one hand.
[ price TBC ] Ask about the year →
THE OTHER LINE · 随身之物
Everyday Objects · No.01 「Water & Moon」
Where the seasonal objects are one thing a season, this line is small enough to forget you are wearing: a strand of agarwood and one plain jade ring. 一串沉香，一枚素环。
See 水月 →
物
A leaf from 2023. Shared today.
一叶自二〇二三年而来，今日共饮。　Ask Larisa about No.01, or come to a table first.
Editor's note · the maker's standing is as recorded in the national intangible heritage register; the year and grade of any given cake are as marked on its own packaging.
←Back to the objects
OBJECTS / EVERYDAY OBJECTS No.01 · WATER & MOON
A still lake at dusk, and a figure at the edge of it
EVERYDAY OBJECTS · 随身之物 No.01 · 香珮 XIANG PEI

Water & Moon

水 月
The moon rests on water, leaving no trace.
月在水中，水不留月
MATERIALS
Natural agarwood · Qinghai qingbai jade
天然沉香 · 青海料青白玉
THE PIECE
A strand for the wrist, one plain ring
一串珠，一枚素环
PROLOGUE · 序
Some things are made
to be carried,
not displayed.
有些东西是用来随身的，
不是用来陈列的。

This is the first of them — a strand of beads for the wrist, and one plain jade ring the size of a small moon.

We did not want to hand anyone “a Buddhist bracelet.” We wanted an object that lets you walk into something older and quieter: a Chinese way of seeing built on stillness, roundness, incense, and the moon.

我们不想只告诉人「这是一串有佛教意义的手串」。我们想做的是：让人通过一件可以佩戴的东西，进入中国人关于静、圆、香、月的一套审美。

圆
I · THE LINE · 一句诗
应是水中月，
波定还自圆。
It must be the moon in the water —
when the ripples settle, it is round again.
宋 · 陈与义《焚香》
OUR READING · 齊間釋
Incense stays with the body; jade keeps the shape of the moon.
香随身，玉如月。

When the water moves, the moon scatters. When the water stills, the moon is whole again — and it was never broken. Nothing was added to it, and nothing had to be repaired. Only the water changed.

水有波时，月影离散；水静下来，月仍自圆。月从未碎过，也没有谁去修补它。变的只是水。

The plain ring on its cord
素 环 · ONE CIRCLE, NO ORNAMENT
II · WHERE THE IMAGE COMES FROM 水月的来历
Water-Moon Guanyin, classical painting
水月观音 · Water-Moon Guanyin, classical painting — the disc of light, the vase on the rock. Used illustratively.

Seen clearly, and never held

The image is old. Chinese Buddhist writing has long used the moon in water as a figure for things that can be seen clearly and never held — the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom is one of the texts that puts it plainly.

这个意象很老。中国佛教传统以「水中月」为重要譬喻——看得见，看得清，却拿不到手里；《大智度论》中即有「如水中月」的表达。

Painters later built an entire figure around it: the Water-Moon Guanyin, seated at the edge of water, watching the moon on its surface. Bamboo behind, a disc of light, a vase set on the rock.

Our own photographs fell into that composition without meaning to: a still lake, a figure at the edge of it, a circle of jade. Reflection, body, ring — the same three things the painters kept.

A pavilion above the water
临水而坐 · at the edge of the water
A figure against the sky
倒影 · reflection, body, ring
III · THE MATERIALS 三种材料
01
Agarwood
沉香
Natural agarwood, nothing added. The scent rises with the warmth of the body.
天然沉香，不添香精。香气随体温慢慢起来。
02
Natural stone
天然石
Left the colour it came in. No dye, no matching, no correction.
天然石配珠，留其本色，不染色、不修饰。
03
The plain ring
素环
Qinghai qingbai or white jade, uncarved. The circle is the only ornament.
青海料青白玉／白玉小素环，不作雕饰。
圆，就是全部的纹样　·　the circle is the only ornament
The strand and the ring The ring and its shadow on the table
一轮 · a small moon, held on a cord　／　案上 · the ring and its shadow
The strand across an open book
心 清 闻 妙 香
A clear mind hears the subtle scent.　— 唐 · 杜甫

In Chinese, one does not smell incense — one hears it. The verb is the same. It is a small piece of grammar that tells you how the thing was meant to be used: not as a fragrance, but as something to attend to.

中文里，香不是「嗅」的，是「闻」的——与听同字。一个字的用法，已经说明了这件事该怎么对待：它不是气味，是需要被听见的东西。

Held in the hand while reading
随 身 · CARRIED, NOT DISPLAYED
IV · WEARING IT 随身

Both prefer skin to a box

Doubled on the wrist; held in the hand while you read; left on the desk when you are not wearing it.

AGARWOOD 沉香 Dislikes water, soap and perfume.　怕水、怕皂、怕香水。
JADE 玉 Dislikes being dropped.　怕摔。
BOTH 两者 Prefer skin to a box.　比起收进盒子，它们更愿意贴着人。

What is printed where

卡片与包装
Three lines, each in its own place.
MAIN LINE · 主句
外盒 · on the box
应是水中月，波定还自圆。
宋 · 陈与义《焚香》
MATERIAL CARD · 材质卡
沉香 · with the strand
心清闻妙香。
唐 · 杜甫
IN THE WRITING · 内容使用
不刻于器物 · not on the object
焚香引幽步，酌茗开净席。
宋 · 苏轼
月
The moon rests on water, leaving no trace.
月在水中，水不留月。　Everyday Objects · Series One · Beijing / New York. Price and edition size [ to be confirmed ].
Editor's note · text and photographs by the QIJIAN editorial team; classical paintings are used illustratively. Natural materials vary in colour, grain and scent.
FIELD NOTES · 札记

Field Notes

Visits, certifications, the room itself. Not press copy — what we went to, learned, and wrote down.
Where we went, what we learned.

Certification note
證
Certification 29 Aug 2026 · Suzhou

Two Apprentices,
Both Certified

One teacher, one apprentice, one table, one vessel.

Han Danning and Li Bingfei sat the Lin School Level One examination and passed. Ten lessons, four characters, one lotus stem standing straight — this stage is genuinely studying under a teacher.

Read it →
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FIELD NOTES / Two Apprentices, Both Certified
Certification note
XENNI · FIELD NOTES　/　札记
CERTIFIED

Certification

One teacher, one apprentice, one table, one vessel
One teacher, one apprentice, one table, one vessel.
Lin School floral art, Level One · certified　　Suzhou　　29 Aug 2026
CERTIFIED

Two Apprentices, Both Certified

Three of us went to Suzhou for this term: Han Danning and Li Bingfei for Level One, with Leye, already at Level Two, working at the same table.

Both sat the Level One examination and passed. The certificates were issued on 29 August 2026.

Han Danning's Level One certificate
Han Danning · Danielle　·　No. 01·002149
Grade One, no. 01·002149
Li Bingfei's Level One certificate
Li Bingfei　·　No. 01·002150
Grade One, no. 01·002150
Level
Lin School floral art · Level One
Certified by
China Floral Art Heritage Association
Presented by
Zhang Yanya
Signed
Lin Xiaozhen · Supervisor
Date
29 August 2026
No.
01·002149 / 01·002150
I · TEN LESSONS

Ten Lessons

The examination tests only the upright forms. That alone tells you the order of things: first you make a stem stand straight, and only much later are you allowed to let it lean.

Level One is ten lessons: one of theory, eight of technique, one of examination. The eight split evenly — four upright forms, four inclined.

1theory
＋
8technique(four upright, four inclined)
＋
1examination(upright only)
II · FOUR WORDS

First, Four Characters

Before you touch the shears you learn four characters. They are not names for positions; they are the whole method, compressed.

běn · the root stemROOT

Root, and also self-knowledge. It stands first; everything else takes its bearing from it.

zì · the self stemSELF

One's own nature, one's own mind. Complete in itself.

liú · the flowing stemFLOW

The gesture of moving water. In a still arrangement, this is what makes it move.

suǒ · the answering stemSUPPORT

If the root stem is the text, this is the commentary — the stroke that opens the dragon's eye.

Four Movements of the Hand Mark · bend · brace · support
The first decides the other three. Choose the starting point wrong and nothing you do afterwards will settle.Once the starting point is chosen, the whole piece is already decided.
III · AT THE TABLE

At the Table

Zhang Yanya's hands never stop while she teaches. A eucalyptus stem turns twice between her fingers and the answer is there — this leaf stays, that one goes.

Ask why that stem and she rarely gives a rule. She asks back: how was it growing? Material goes in the direction it grew — up, inward, forward. Never lined up like a fence.

Nothing to add. Nothing to take away.
Join all the points and they close into a circle. That is the whole of it.
Lotus, Standing
Lotus, Standing lotus, standing
Li Bingfei chose lotus. A seed pod, a bud, one broad leaf, each stem set upright and quietly climbing. The finished piece stands; it does not spread.
Each apprentice's work comes out differently according to her state of mind and her material — some broad, some fine. Neither is wrong.
—— the teacher's comment
NEXT · 下一步

Level One corresponds to our L3 · Refining Your Own Work— the stage where you genuinely study under a teacher. Autumn Flowers on 24 October continues the same line.

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FIELD NOTES / A Day at Tianzhen Garden
A Day at Tianzhen Garden
FIELD NOTES · 走访手记 2026 · Vol.01

A Day at Tianzhen Garden

A Day at Tianzhen Garden · On How Heritage Comes Alive in a Generation

— how a culture starts happening again in young people

Everyone approves of heritage work. Very few people actually do it. We have visited a good many places, interviewed a good many masters, and put the question to circle after circle of professors — and one thing never goes away: how does a culture actually come alive in someone young?

XENNI editorial · 2026 · Wuqing, Tianjin
Ⅰ

A Place That Is Easy to Be In

Tianzhen Garden sits in the old town of Yongyang, in Wuqing between Beijing and Tianjin — twenty-odd minutes from the city, and somehow in a different century.

Its foundation is Li-style Taiji, drawn together at the turn of the last century by the master Li Ruidong from several martial traditions. It entered the national register in 2014 and, with Taiji as a whole, the UNESCO list in 2020. For more than twenty years Xing Qilin, its fourth-generation holder, and Dr Cui Ailing have worked with their team to refine, verify and preserve it — and built this place around it.

There is a kind of teaching that needs no speaking. You are simply here, and it is comfortable. Open a door and there are fields; people greet each other without being told to; the whole place is warm, orderly and quiet. Walking around it, what struck us was not any particular activity but the place itself — it changes people.

Ⅱ

What We Saw Was People Changing

Every day here holds at least four hours of practice, moving and still: Taiji at dawn, classics and setting the house in order through the morning, calligraphy and painting after lunch, and study together at seven.

What moved us was not the timetable but the result. People who have soaked in this are focused, orderly and able to plan — from folding clothes and using a day well, up to running a market stall or organising an event outright. Many of them treat the place as a second home and are reluctant to leave.

Teaching should not turn a person into a tool, he told us. Particular skills will be taken over by machines; the capacity to learn, to notice, to get on with people and to speak well will not. Good teaching opens those. They have a name for what this kind of learning does — it remakes a person — and they mean it plainly: whichever way you come in, within a few days your bearing, your confidence and your state of mind are different.

Ⅲ

The Conversation Turned to Something Larger

Two teachers in their seventies have spent decades at this, and their whole working lives on handing it on — waiting, all the while, for a generation willing to come close and take it up. That day they sat down and talked with us for a long time. What we heard was a plain willingness to give everything away.

Heritage is not only craft. It moves from technique to art, from art to study, from study to a way of living. Taiji was never merely a form; it is a picture of the universe and a method for living in it. Its centre is harmony, and harmony turns on how people are taught.

What you accomplish is the size of what you intend.
If the intention is that young people, in China and elsewhere, find the root of their own lives — then the people who share it will come.
Tianzhen Garden · in conversation
III · continued

Build a System, Not a Corridor

We put our real worry to them: how do you avoid building one more thing people finish and walk away from? Li Shan's answer stayed with us — build a system, not a corridor. With heritage as the entrance and Taiji as the method, you can accompany someone at three depths: a series on living an ordered and effective life; a practical series carried by crafts such as tea and incense; and a series about finding an anchor for one's life inside a culture.

From left: XENNI team · Dr Cui Ailing · Xing Qilin · XENNI team · Lily of Tianzhen Garden
From left: XENNI team · Dr Cui Ailing · Xing Qilin · XENNI team · Lily of Tianzhen Garden
Ⅳ

The Baton

At the end of the conversation he said that meeting this group of young people felt like finding someone to hand the baton to.

It landed all at once. Li Ruidong had already carried martial arts as far as the school gate. If it has not yet flowered inside the schools, that is exactly the piece of work left to our generation.

On one side, young people raised inside a tradition. On the other, us, raised between languages. The same age, different tracks — and in Taiji, in this inheritance, a language both can speak. This is only the beginning.

CODA

Letting a Culture Happen Again

What makes a culture a culture is not that it was once magnificent, but whether it can happen again in one generation after another.

What we saw here is that handing something on is neither sealing the past intact nor repackaging it for sale. It is letting an old intelligence back into the order of a present-day life — into young bodies, habits, taste and judgement.

The cultural life of a people usually continues somewhere quieter than the loud places — somewhere specific, and over a long time. Someone spends twenty years ordering, verifying, teaching and living it. Someone else travels a long way to sit down, listen, stand up, practise, and carry it back into their own decade. The baton is not a grand object. It usually changes hands in one meeting, one conversation, one afternoon of doing the thing.

We do not think this is easy. No culture has ever been revived by a burst of enthusiasm. It takes long patience, an accurate method, and a generation genuinely willing to put itself in. What we saw at Tianzhen Garden that day was that it is possible.

About Tianzhen Garden

Where
Yongyang old town, Wuqing district, Tianjin — between Beijing and Tianjin, about 6.7 hectares
Founded
By Xing Qilin, fourth-generation holder of Li-style Taiji, with Dr Cui Ailing — begun in 2001, completed in 2009
Foundation
Li-style Taiji comes from the master Li Ruidong; it entered China's national register in 2014 and, with Taiji as a whole, the UNESCO list in 2020
The founders
Xing Qilin: fourth-generation holder, adviser to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, graduated in martial arts from Tianjin University of Sport in 1981. Cui Ailing: doctorate in engineering; scientist and entrepreneur; studied in Japan
Approach
Letters, martial arts, medicine, farming and the arts, practised together — moving and still. A philosophy of Taiji and of health; no religion, no politics
Editor's note · a field note by the XENNI editorial team; some historical detail is drawn from Tianzhen Garden's own site and public sources.
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FIELD NOTES / Made by Hand · Origins
Made by Hand · Origins
ON SITE · lecture series, part one 18 Apr 2026 · PKU Science Park

Made by Hand · Origins

Making Things From Source · Issue 01

Mother-of-Pearl Inlay — a lecture and workshop

The first of our lecture series opened at PKU Science Park — the first public event of our apprenticeship programme in Beijing. Lecture and workshop ran together, with young people from universities in China and abroad working through one complete piece in a craft that is only now being looked at properly again.

XENNI editorial · 18 Apr 2026 · Room 312, PKU Science Park
Ⅰ

About the Craft

Luodian is inlay made from the inner layer of shell — sliced thin, cut to shape and set into the surface of an object. Mature by the Tang and developed through every dynasty since, it is among the most characteristic techniques in Chinese lacquer and furniture.

A finished piece passes through twelve stages: design, choosing and matching material, sawing, shaping, assembling and numbering, routing the channel, setting the shell, gluing with fish glue, incising the pattern, lacquering, repeated polishing, and finishing.

A monkey on horseback — the words for monkey and for nobleman sound alike, so the image wishes you swift advancement
A monkey on horseback — the words for monkey and for nobleman sound alike, so the image wishes you swift advancement
Ⅱ

Two Motifs

Both belong to the old system of auspicious images. One turns on a pun and wishes you rank and success; the other sets a horse beside a pine, for strength and long life.

In our teaching these are not decoration. They are living samples of a popular visual language, carrying a whole system of wishes, metaphors and social expectations — and they are exactly the part of this inheritance most worth translating across cultures.

Ⅲ

Workshop

The workshop was led by the inlay craftsman Zou Yu. Participants worked through six stages — selecting shell, transferring and laying out the design, mounting it on the base, cleaning the surface, setting the inlay and sealing it — and each finished a piece of their own.

Selecting, laying out, mounting — six stages, one at a time
Selecting, laying out, mounting — six stages, one at a time
Zou Yu working with participants
Zou Yu working with participants
Ⅳ

Signing the Piece

Once sealed, each participant wrote their own inscription on the accompanying card. Finishing with a brush is how Chinese handwork has always let the object and the person sign for each other.

The inscription: a brush finishes the piece
The inscription: a brush finishes the piece
Handwork is an art that carries body heat. There is something healing in it.
Handed on, and on, and on.
Zou Yu · inlay craftsman
Made by Hand · Origins, part one — participants with their finished pieces. Several were international and exchange students
Made by Hand · Origins, part one — participants with their finished pieces. Several were international and exchange students

About the Lecture Series

What it is
Made by Hand is our standing public series. Each part takes one craft, with its master both lecturing and running the workshop
Why
To move a craft from display to practice, from knowing about it to doing it. What matters now is not only that it survives, but whether it gets back into the texture of ordinary life
Next
The series continues; crafts already lined up include silk flowers, fan-making, shadow puppetry and inlay
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FIELD NOTES / Song Brocade Fan Salon
Song Brocade Fan Salon
ON SITE · by invitation 7 Jun 2026 · Gule Mingxuan, Haidian, Beijing

Song Brocade Fan Salon

A Song-Brocade Afternoon · Fan, Flowers and Tea

Make a fan; sit down to flowers and tea. One gathering, and the start of a summer.

Song brocade dates from the dynasty it is named for and is one of China's three great brocades — warm in pattern, restrained in colour, an eastern sense of beauty woven into silk. This Sunday we make it into a fan.

XENNI editorial · 7 Jun 2026 · by invitation · ten seats
Ⅰ

The Fan · 宋锦团扇

Choose the brocade, match the colours, shape the frame, and make a round fan by hand. The teacher stays with you throughout; no experience needed; it goes home with you.

Choose the brocade, the color, the form — and shape a round fan with your own hands. Guided from start to finish, no experience needed. Finish it, take it home.

Song brocade
Song brocade
Eastern floral art
Eastern floral art
Ⅱ

The Flowers · 一席花

One vessel, arranged to the season. Empty space, asymmetry — the eastern way with flowers. Between one stem and one leaf, everything slows.

Arrange a single vessel of seasonal blooms. Negative space, asymmetry — the heart of Eastern floral art.

Ⅲ

The Tea · 一道茶

One round of tea and a seasonal sweet. Over the cups: the craft, the season, and this particular summer.

A round of tea, with sweets made for the current solar term. Over cups, we talk craft, season, and the summer ahead.

Slow down one afternoon,
and keep one craft in your hands.
XENNI · Sunday gathering
THIS INSTRUCTOR · 本期讲师

Zou Zhiyan

Zou Zhiyan
Zou Zhixin
Founder of Xihefang studio · senior heritage craft instructor
Practitioner of Chinese floral art · salon lecturer in eastern aesthetics

Fans, flowers, tea — one pair of hands and a great deal of care. She takes you through all of it.

Ⅳ

From One Afternoon to a Summer

Elegance is only the way in. Once you have made something and sat with it, the questions arrive by themselves: how does a craft like this get seen today, and how does the rest of the world read it?

This Sunday, students from Peking University and universities abroad sit down to talk about what a craft means to their generation — through anthropology, design and media studies. The same object means different things in each.

Some questions do not finish in an afternoon.

Event Details · 这一席

When
Sunday 7 June 2026, 14:00
Where
Gule Mingxuan · Haidian, Beijing
Who
International-school students in arts and social sciences, aged 14–18
Seats
Ten · by invitation
Writing
A Song brocade fan, a table of flowers, tea and a seasonal sweet
Editor's note · compiled from our invitation and notes taken on the day; some images are from earlier events or are indicative.
分承
LEARNING · 学艺

First You Visit. Then You Study.

Meeting a craft at a gathering is sharing. Staying on to study under a master is lineage. We do only these two things, and we would rather you came back than finished fast.

TWO STAGES · 两段关系

One is having come. The other is being taken in.

Literary Gathering, Song dynasty (detail)
分
Sharing Sharing Salons · workshops · exhibitions

Anyone can come; there is no bar and no exam. A salon, a workshop, a visit — you sit down and do one craft properly, once. Checking in just records what you practised today, and one line is enough. It isn't asking you to master anything. It's asking whether you'll come back.

How to start
Sign up for any gathering
Check in five times
You have a learning record
Reach 30 hours
You may apply to enter a master's door
See every past gathering →
Listening to the Qin, Song dynasty (detail)
承
Lineage Apprenticeship A teacher for a day is a father for life

Every teacher we work with was recognised the old way — with a master above them and the right to take apprentices below, their name on a line you can count backwards along. So entering a master's door is not enrolling in a class. There is a fixed teacher, a fixed time, work to hand in, an application and an interview, and you may be told to do it again. In the old language, a lineage is close to a family: once you are inside, what your teacher looks after is not only your craft.

How to enter
Apply, then meet the master
Study far enough
Your work enters our exhibitions and the three-city tour
On your teacher's recommendation
You may take apprentices, and pass the place on
See all four masters →
MASTERS · 传承人

The Doors That Are Open

We keep them few. Each craft answers to one master — whose door it is, and where the school comes from, is there behind the name. Tea is now settled too — Wang Xufeng.

Taiji
TAIJIQUAN
Xing Qilin
Xing Qilin
Fourth-generation holder, Li-style Taiji
Founder, Tianzhen Garden
The Li-style Taiji line of Wuqing, Tianjin; a registered heritage holder at district level. Taught in the garden, this is the least classroom-like thing we offer.
Read more →
Floral Art
FLORAL ART
Lin Xiaozhen
Lin Xiaozhen
Founder, Lin School floral art
Chair, China Floral Art Heritage Association
Founded her school on how a plant actually grows, and wrote the first Chinese book on the inner life of floral art. We have run two study terms with the school; two apprentices have certified.
Read more →
Same school
Suzhou branch
Zhang Yanya
Zhang Yanya
Director and professor, Suzhou branch, Lin School
Certified instructor, China Floral Art Heritage Association
She studied seven years before she was permitted to teach. Our floral classes and examinations across the Yangtze delta run through her branch.
Read more →
Guqin
GUQIN
Liu Yang
Liu Yang
Twelfth-generation holder, Guangling guqin school
Guqin · provincial heritage holder, Jiangsu
His grandfather Liu Shaochun was the tenth generation; in 1982 he formally took Mei Yueqiang as his master. He is vice-president of the Guangling Qin Society.
Read more →
Tea
TEA
Wang Xufeng
Wang Xufeng
Novelist of the Tea Trilogy
Professor, Zhejiang A&F University
Fifth Mao Dun Literature Prize; formerly at the China Tea Museum. Tea is the one craft here whose teacher came to it through study and writing.
Read more →
CHECK IN · 今日打卡

As easy as a post.
One line is enough.

No reflections required, no nice photography. Practise, write a line. Five of them and you have a record of your own.

Craft
Taiji Floral Art Tea Guqin Incense
Click or drag to upload · JPG / PNG · optional, up to 4
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LEARNING / EVERY GATHERING SO FAR
分
SHARING · 往期

Every Table
We Have Set

Eleven gatherings since 2024 — salons, workshops, exhibitions and visits. Where we have written one up, the field note is linked. This is also the evidence of what we can build for a school or an institution.

Everything, in order

2024 — 2026 · 11 GATHERINGS
Attending any of these counts towards your learning record.
2026.08
CERTIFICATION
Lin School Floral Art, Level One
中国林派花道 一段
Suzhou branch of the Lin School
Two apprentices sat the examination and passed; certificates signed by Zhang Yanya.
2026.07
INTENSIVE
Seven-Day Intensive
七日研习营
Beijing
Ages 14–18. Four crafts, national-level masters, seven days.
no write-up
2026.06
SALON
Song Brocade Fan Salon
宋锦扇雅集
Gule Mingxuan · Haidian, Beijing
Ten seats, by invitation. A fan, a table of flowers, a round of tea.
2026.04
WORKSHOP
Made by Hand · Origins
造物集 · 源流
PKU Science Park, Room 312
Mother-of-pearl inlay with Zou Zhiyan. The first of the public lecture series.
2026
FIELD NOTE
A Day at Tianzhen Garden
天真园一日
Yongyang old town · Wuqing, Tianjin
A visit to the Li-style Taiji line, and a long conversation with its holders.
2025.04
EXHIBITION
Spring Papercut Exhibition
剪纸春日展
Tsinghua Art Museum
Seven days, more than six hundred visitors. Students shown beside masters.
no write-up
2025.03
WORKSHOP
Tea Ceremony Workshop
茶道体验工坊
PKU Centennial Hall
An introduction to whisked tea, open to the whole campus.
no write-up
2025.01
TALK
Heritage and Contemporary Life
非遗与当代生活
Tsinghua University
A public conversation on what these crafts are for now.
no write-up
2024.12
COURSE
Introduction to Calligraphy
书法入门课
Beijing
A short course for beginners — brush, posture, and the first ten characters.
no write-up
2024.11
CAMP
Morning Taiji Camp
太极晨练营
Peking University
Standing and form at dawn, every morning for a fortnight.
no write-up
2024.10
EXHIBITION
Autumn Floral Exhibition
花道秋日展
Tsinghua University
Seasonal arrangements by students of the Lin School.
no write-up
席
The next one is on 26 September.
Twelve seats, by application, bilingual. Coming once is all sharing asks of you.
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LEARNING / THE MASTERS
承
THE MASTERS · 传承人

Whose Door
You Would Be Entering

Six teachers. Five hold a named place in a named school, with a master above them and the right to take apprentices below; tea came to us through scholarship instead, and the page says so. Incense still runs as a gathering while we talk to a teacher.

The six who teach here

LINEAGE · 师承
Click a name for the school, the line, and how to study with them.
Xing Qilin
Xing Qilin 邢启林
TAIJI 太极
Fourth-generation holder of Li-style Taiji · founder of Tianzhen Garden
STANDING
Registered heritage holder, Wuqing district, Tianjin (7th cohort) · adviser to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism
THE LINE
Li Ruidong → [ 2nd–3rd gen ] → Xing Qilin
Read the full page →
Lin Xiaozhen
Lin Xiaozhen 林晓真
FLORAL ART 花道
Founder of the Lin School · chair of the China Floral Art Heritage Association
STANDING
Founded the school on the principle of natural growth; author of the first Chinese book on the inner life of floral art
THE LINE
Founder of the line · studying since 1989
Read the full page →
Zhang Yanya
Zhang Yanya 张艳亚
FLORAL ART 花道
Director and professor, Suzhou branch of the Lin School
STANDING
Certified instructor of the association — may teach, examine and sign certificates
THE LINE
Lin Xiaozhen → Zhang Yanya · seven years before she was permitted to teach
Read the full page →
Liu Yang
Liu Yang 刘扬
GUQIN 琴道
Twelfth-generation holder of the Guangling school · vice-president of the Guangling Qin Society
STANDING
Provincial heritage holder, Jiangsu · the guqin was inscribed by UNESCO in 2003
THE LINE
Liu Shaochun (10th) → Liu Rongzhen → Mei Yueqiang → Liu Yang
Read the full page →
Wang Xufeng
Wang Xufeng 王旭烽
TEA 茶道
Novelist of the Tea Trilogy · professor at Zhejiang A&F University
STANDING
First-class writer · vice-chair of the Zhejiang Writers Association · fifth Mao Dun Literature Prize
THE LINE
A scholar's line: history at Zhejiang University → the China Tea Museum → Zhejiang A&F University
Read the full page →
Jian Yueyang
Jian Yueyang 简越洋
FLORAL ART 花道
First-grade Sogetsu master · installation artist · founder of Yueyang Ikebana & Space
STANDING
Sogetsu first grade · second-grade standing instructor · works in airports and public squares across China
THE LINE
Nishiyama Kōsha 西山光沙 (Sogetsu) → Jian Yueyang · a Japanese school carried back on purpose
Read the full page →

Still without a teacher

ONE CRAFT LEFT
You can already do this at a table; the long-term teacher is not settled.
門

How you get in

NOT AN ENROLMENT
FIRST
Sit at one table
Come to a gathering in that craft. Both sides see whether it fits.
THEN
Apply, then meet the master
Thirty logged hours and an interview. Whether they take you is their decision.
AFTER
Fixed teacher, fixed time
Work to hand in, an examination, and you may be told to do it again.
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MASTERS / Xing Qilin · Li-style Taiji
太極
MASTER · 传承人

Xing Qilin

Xing Qilin

Taiji · fourth-generation holder of Li-style Taiji and founder of Tianzhen Garden. Taiji was inscribed by UNESCO in 2020.

Xing Qilin

The Man

Fourth-generation holder of Li-style Taiji and a registered heritage holder in Wuqing, Tianjin. The style comes from Wuqing, and this is the line he carries — both the man and the form still in the place they grew.

He founded Tianzhen Garden and directs its research institute. Taiji was the first craft we settled here, precisely because it is the least like a class: you get up early, stand, drink tea, talk, and the form itself is only part of the day.

Fourth-generation holder, Li-style Taiji
Registered heritage holder, Wuqing district, Tianjin
Adviser on Taiji to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism
Vice-chair, Taiji committee, China Intangible Heritage Protection Association
Founder of Tianzhen Garden · director of its Taiji research institute
Visiting professor, Henan Polytechnic University
Honorary professor and doctor, International Medical University
THE LINE · 这一脉

Li-style Taiji · Wuqing, Tianjin

Founder Li Ruidong Of Wuqing, Tianjin; founder of the Li style
2nd–3rd gen [ to be filled in ] The two teachers' names, once you've checked them with him
4th generation Xing Qilin Founder of Tianzhen Garden · Taiji at XENNI

Wuqing district entered Li-style Taiji on its heritage register, and he is one of its listed holders. Not a title he gave himself — one you can look up.

Taiji · UNESCO heritage

In December 2020 Taiji was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List.

What the listing recognises is not any one form but how the thing gets taught from one generation to the next. So the condition for teaching Taiji here is that the teacher holds a named place in a named school.

HIS GARDEN · 天真园

Tianzhen Garden

Tianzhen Garden

He built the garden, and it is where he teaches and receives people — and where A Day at Tianzhen takes place: morning practice, tea in the afternoon, and nothing scheduled in between.

The garden matters more to us than a classroom. A craft taken out of the place it grew in changes flavour, so we would rather take people there than bring the teacher into a meeting room.

Where
[ to be filled in ]
Access
With a gathering only; not open otherwise
HOW TO STUDY · 怎么学

Two Routes. You Choose the Order.

Sharing A single table · open to anyone

Join A Day at Tianzhen: one morning practice, one session of standing, one table of tea.

See the schedule →
Lineage Long-term · application and interview

A fixed time and a fixed group; once you are in, he sets the schedule. [ length and fees TBC ]

Apply to enter →
A teacher for a day is a father for life

In the old language a lineage is close to a family. Sit at one table first and let both sides see whether it fits — that is what we suggest to everyone.

←Back to Learning
MASTERS / Lin School Floral Art
MASTERS · 传承人

Lin School Floral Art

The Lin School

Founded by Lin Xiaozhen; the Suzhou branch is run by Zhang Yanya. Our floral teaching, its examinations and its certificates all run through the school's head office and the China Floral Art Heritage Association.

Lin Xiaozhen

Lin Xiaozhen

Lin Xiaozhen Founder of the Lin School · Chair, China Floral Art Heritage Association
From Taiwan · studying floral art since 1989

Lin Xiaozhen drew together Chinese tradition with Western and Japanese technique to found a school whose principle is natural growth: a stem goes in the way it grew, rather than being forced into the shape a person wants. For years she has worked to revive both Chinese floral art and the tradition of flowers offered before the Buddha.

Her book was the first in China on the inner life of floral art. She continues to teach through national lecture tours, international exhibitions and cross-strait exchange.

Principle
Natural growth
Book
Wan Hua Xin Jing
Now
Chair, China Floral Art Heritage Association

Zhang Yanya

Zhang Yanya Director and professor, Suzhou branch, Lin School
Certified instructor and senior lecturer, China Floral Art Heritage Association

She studied seven years before she was permitted to teach, then built the Suzhou branch from nothing — teaching, examining, certifying, and carrying flowers to the temples as offerings. The head office's gold award came after those seven years, not before.

Our floral classes and examinations across the Yangtze delta run through her branch. Flowers belong to their soil and water; what ends up in your hands in Suzhou is not what ends up in them elsewhere.

Lineage
Lin Xiaozhen → Zhang Yanya
Standing
Certified instructor · may teach, examine and certify
Branch
Suzhou · [ address TBC ]
Zhang Yanya
CERTIFICATION · 证书

We Don't Issue It. That's Why It Counts.

Read the certification note →
Three bodies, one each
China Floral Art Heritage Association
Examination · certification · issue
Lin School head office
Oversees the branches
Suzhou branch · Zhang Yanya
Teaches, examines, and signs the certificate

Every certificate carries the association's seal, the name of whoever presented it, and a number. We issue none of our own and do not intend to: how far you have got is the school's call, not ours.

Li Bingfei's certificate
Li Bingfei
Certificate no. 01·002150
Han Danning's certificate
Han Danning Danielle
Certificate no. 01·002149
THE WORK · 作品

Beyond the Certificate

Floral work
Floral work
In class
Trimming a lotus stem
Floral work

Work and classes from Li Bingfei and Han Danning's term with the school. Lotus, cattail, ginger flower — each stem left standing the way it grew. That is what the school means by natural growth. [ tell us which is whose and we'll add the names ]

HOW TO STUDY · 怎么学

Two Routes. You Choose the Order.

Sharing A single table · open to anyone

Arrange once at a gathering, from choosing stems to fixing the shape, and take it home the same day.

See the schedule →
Lineage A term of study · examined and certified

Complete the school's course, pass the examination, and the association issues a signed certificate. [ terms, fees and start dates TBC ]

Apply to enter →
A teacher for a day is a father for life

In the old language a lineage is close to a family. Sit at one table first and let both sides see whether it fits — that is what we suggest to everyone.

←Back to Learning
MASTERS / Liu Yang · Guangling Guqin
MASTER · 传承人

Liu Yang

Liu Yang

Guqin · twelfth-generation holder of the Guangling school and a provincial heritage holder in Jiangsu. The guqin was inscribed by UNESCO in 2003.

Liu Yang

The Man

Born in Yangzhou in 1957. His grandfather Liu Shaochun was the tenth-generation holder of the Guangling school, and he learned from him and from his mother Liu Rongzhen as a child. In 1982 he formally took Mei Yueqiang, his grandfather's student, as his master, and studied twenty-eight Guangling pieces in sequence.

Grandfather to mother, then finished by an elder of the same school: this is exactly what the old word for lineage means. It is the line we look for when we choose a teacher.

Twelfth-generation holder, Guangling guqin school
Guqin · provincial heritage holder, Jiangsu
Vice-president, Guangling Qin Society
Standing council member, Chinese Qin Association
Standing council member, Chinese Guqin Society · expert on its instrument-making committee
Council member, Chinese Guqin and Kunqu Association
Chief expert on guqin culture, Chinese Culture Management Association
THE LINE · 这条线

Count Back Four Generations. It's One Family.

10th generation Liu Shaochun His grandfather · tenth-generation holder of the Guangling school
Mother Liu Rongzhen He learned from his grandfather and his mother as a child
1982 Mei Yueqiang Liu Shaochun's student · formally taken as master; twenty-eight pieces learned
12th generation Liu Yang Vice-president of the Guangling Qin Society · guqin at XENNI

The guqin is close to unteachable from a book. Fingering, breath and phrasing all pass by one person putting their hand onto another's. That is why, for three hundred years, it has survived only through lineage.

The Guangling School

Guangling is Yangzhou. Xu Changyu founded the school there in the early Qing; three of its handbooks survive.

It has one of the most complete surviving repertoires and an unbroken line of transmission. In 2008 the Guangling school entered China's national heritage register.

HOW TO STUDY · 怎么学

Two Routes. You Choose the Order.

Sharing At a gathering · open to anyone

Hear one piece, put your hands on the strings once, and find out where the difficulty actually is.

See the schedule →
Lineage One to one · very few places

By interview; whether he takes you is his decision. [ hours, fees and instrument TBC ]

Apply to enter →
A teacher for a day is a father for life

In the old language a lineage is close to a family. Sit at one table first and let both sides see whether it fits — that is what we suggest to everyone.

←Back to the masters
MASTERS / WANG XUFENG · TEA
Wang Xufeng
茶
TEACHER · 茶道

Wang Xufeng 王旭烽

A novelist of tea, and a professor of it

Tea at XENNI is taught by someone who has spent a working life on it two ways at once: at the China Tea Museum, and at a desk, writing the novels that put the leaf at the centre of a Chinese century.

BORN
February 1955 · Pinghu, Zhejiang
FAMILY FROM
Xuzhou, Jiangsu
NOW
Professor, Zhejiang A&F University
HER WORK · 其人

A historian who went
to work at a tea museum

Wang Xufeng read history at Zhejiang University and graduated in 1982, then went to work at the China Tea Museum. She had published her first fiction two years earlier, in 1980.

Her Tea Trilogy won the fifth Mao Dun Literature Prize — the highest award for the novel in China — together with the national Five-One Project award and the Eighth Five-Year Plan prize for long fiction. In 2019 the trilogy was chosen for the canon of seventy novels marking seventy years of the People's Republic.

She is a first-class writer, vice-chair of the Zhejiang Writers Association, and a professor at Zhejiang A&F University — where tea is a subject, not a hobby.

STANDING
First-class writer　一级作家
Vice-chair, Zhejiang Writers Association　浙江省作家协会副主席
Professor, Zhejiang A&F University　浙江农林大学教授
Zhejiang University, Department of History, 1982
Formerly at the China Tea Museum　中国茶叶博物馆
A scholar's line rather than a lineage: history at Zhejiang University → the China Tea Museum → Zhejiang A&F University. Tea is the one craft here whose teacher came to it through study and writing, and we say so plainly.

What she has written

SINCE 1980
Tea is the subject she keeps returning to.
THE TEA TRILOGY
Tea Trilogy
《茶人三部曲》
5th Mao Dun Literature Prize · national Five-One Project award, 1995 · Eighth Five-Year Plan prize for long fiction · chosen in 2019 for the seventy-novel canon of seventy years
2022
Gazing South of the River
《望江南》
A novel.
2023.05
The Tea Quartet
《茶人四部曲》
The trilogy carried further.
2025.11 · 2026.07
Reading the West Lake on Foot
《走读西湖》·《浙江传》
And, in July 2026, a life of Zhejiang itself.
←Back to the masters
MASTERS / JIAN YUEYANG · FLORAL ART
Jian Yueyang
花
TEACHER · 花道

Jian Yueyang 简越洋

Ikebana is sculpture that breathes

A boy from a mountain village who renamed himself 越洋 — across the ocean — because he wanted to see a larger world. He crossed it, studied ikebana in Japan for a decade, and came back to build a practice here.

SCHOOL
Sogetsu 草月流 · first grade
TAUGHT BY
Nishiyama Kōsha 西山光沙
STUDIO
Beijing, since 2015
“My ambition is to revive and carry forward a floral art that is China's own.”
我的理想是复兴和推广中国自己的花道艺术。
— 简越洋
HIS PATH · 其人

Five years of literature,
then ten of flowers

Five years reading Chinese literature at Peking University, then Japan: language, design school, and long study under Nishiyama Kōsha of the Sogetsu School — the most restless of the Japanese schools, the one that lets you use any material and any vessel.

1996–2000北京大学 中文系Chinese literature, Peking University
2001留学日本Moves to Japan
2007师从西山光沙先生Begins long study under Nishiyama Kōsha, Sogetsu School
2014日本中央工学校 设计科Interior design, Chuo Kogakko, Tokyo
2015「越洋花道 & 空间」Founds his own studio in Beijing
STANDING
First-grade ikebana master, Sogetsu School　日本草月流一级花道家
Second-grade standing instructor, Sogetsu　草月流师范二级常任参与
Installation artist　装置艺术家
Studio: Yueyang Ikebana & Space, Beijing
Covered by People's Daily Online, Xinhua, China Flower News
A Japanese school, carried back deliberately: he trained in Sogetsu and says plainly that what he wants is a floral art of China's own. We list his grade as the school grants it, and his works as the studio records them.

Four directions

四个方向
Sculpture · space · installation · small works

Ikebana is sculpture that breathes; sculpture is ikebana held still. Where a work and a room answer each other, the whole space becomes the experience — which is where 花道 parts company with 花艺: it refuses a fixed vocabulary of what each flower is supposed to mean, and it refuses to be decoration.

The Kiss · Beijing, 2023
「吻」
The Kiss · Beijing, 2023
SCULPTURE · 静之湖, Beijing
Mengzi, Yunnan, 2025
「华章」
Mengzi, Yunnan, 2025
SCULPTURE · 红河三部曲
Shenzhen Bao'an Airport, 2015
「盛世繁华」
Shenzhen Bao'an Airport, 2015
SPACE · 10m wide, 7m deep · bamboo
Wuhan Tianhe Airport, 2018
「武汉之瞳」
Wuhan Tianhe Airport, 2018
INSTALLATION
Chengdu Shuangliu Airport, 2016
「蜀乐」
Chengdu Shuangliu Airport, 2016
INSTALLATION · dyed Sichuan bamboo
Dead wood, early spring
「无题」
Dead wood, early spring
SMALL WORKS · 上色枯木 / 针垫花
One flower, one world; one leaf, one Buddha.
一花一世界，一叶一如来。
Every stem has its own nature and its own right place — and so does everything else. Settle the one stem in your hand and you can settle yourself.

In public space

公共空间作品选
Airports, squares and hotels · as recorded by the studio
2015Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport「盛世繁华」
2016Beijing Capital International Airport「枯木逢春」
2016Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport「蜀乐」
2016Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport「丰碑」
2016Beijing Capital International Airport T3「帆」
2017Sanya International Tropical Orchid Expo「兰竹」
2018Nanjing Lukou International Airport「金陵气韵」
2018Wuhan Tianhe International Airport「武汉之瞳」
2018Capital International Airport T1 / T2「荷塘月色」「花好月圆」
2018Shanghai Pudong International Airport「海上花」
2019Nanjing Lukou International Airport「南京之眼」「祈福」
2020Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport「化茧成蝶」
2020Xi'an Xianyang International AirportNational Day scheme
2022August First Film Studio, Beijing「红色经典」
2022Haigui Town, Guangzhou「有凤来仪」「枯山水」
2025Mengzi, Yunnan「涅槃」「丰碑」「华章」
Editor's note · compiled from materials provided by 越洋花道 & 空间; images courtesy of the studio. Grades are as granted by the Sogetsu School.
←Back to Schedule
GATHERINGS / Salon 03 · Reading Winter by Scent
Reading Winter by Scent
SALON 03 · LIGHT SNOW

Reading Winter by Scent

Scent of Winter
21 Nov 2026 · [ venue TBC ] · 12 seats
Join the waitlist →
¥899 per person · opening soon
ABOUT THIS TABLE

Smelling Your Way Back Through the Year

In China incense is something you listen to with your nose, not something you scent a room with. This table starts with a seal: powder pressed into a stencil, one thin line of smoke, burning stroke by stroke. It was how time was kept — and how people settled into a seat.

Then warming rather than burning: a silver leaf between coal and material, so nothing catches and the scent comes off in layers. At the end everyone blends a winter incense of their own and takes it home. [ master and venue TBC ]

WHAT HAPPENS
The Incense Seal

Powder pressed into a stencil, one thin thread of smoke. They kept time by it; we open the afternoon with it.

Warming, Not Burning

A silver leaf over the coal, no flame anywhere. The same material at a different temperature is a completely different smell.

Blend Your Own

Blend a winter scent to your own nose, press it, seal it, take it home the same day.

Not open yet — but you can queue

The venue and the master for 21 November are still being settled. Leave your name and we'll tell you on WeChat the moment applications open.

←Back to Schedule
GATHERINGS / Salon 04 · Sitting Around One Table
Sitting Around One Table
SALON 04 · WINTER SOLSTICE

Sitting Around One Table

Gathering Around the Table
19 Dec 2026 · [ venue TBC ] · 12 seats
Join the waitlist →
¥899 per person · opening soon
ABOUT THIS TABLE

The Solstice and Christmas, Same Week

The winter solstice is China's own day for gathering — as big as New Year, the saying goes. This year it falls beside Christmas: two days about coming together, landing at once. A good reason to set one table where both sides can sit.

One long table, twelve people, four crafts running at once: tea, incense, flowers, writing. You make, then you eat, then you keep talking. No programme, no head of the table. [ menu and venue TBC ]

WHAT HAPPENS
One Table

Twelve at one long table, with no seat of honour. This is how the Song sat down to eat.

Four at Once

Tea, incense, flowers and writing each take a stretch of the afternoon. Start wherever you like.

A Solstice Meal

A meal cooked to the season, by the same people who then eat it.

Not open yet — but you can queue

The menu and venue for 19 December are still being settled. Leave your name and we'll tell you on WeChat the moment applications open.

←Back to Schedule
GATHERINGS / Salon 05 · New Year in the Mountains
Mount Tiantai at dusk
SALON 05 · JOURNEY

New Year in the Mountains

New Year in the Mountains
4–7 Feb 2027 · four days, three nights · Mount Tiantai · KAI Tiantai, Hoshino Resorts

Not coming to China to watch a New Year, but keeping one, properly, on Mount Tiantai.

Apply for a place →
¥12,999 per person · four days, three nights
WHY NEW YEAR · 为什么

New Year Is the Deepest Door
into Chinese culture

Customs, crafts, food, ceremony and people coming together — these are the only days in the year when all of it happens at once. So we don't run a New-Year-themed event. We keep New Year.

For the 2027 New Year we go to Mount Tiantai with KAI Tiantai, Hoshino Resorts: four days, three nights, strictly limited. You are not watching a Chinese New Year. You are part of one.

Mount Tiantai · the cave Guanyin
WHERE YOU STAY · 住在哪儿

Into the Mountains by Day, Home by Night

KAI Tiantai · Hoshino Resorts
Inside the hotel
KAI Tiantai · Hoshino Resorts

The mountain is part of the journey. Forest, winter, temples and quiet — enough to take you out of the rhythm of a city for a while.

The setting suits the New Year we want to hold: restrained, quiet, and leaving real room between people and the landscape. Staying four days in one place, you see the mountain from morning fog through to a winter night.

Date
2027.02.04 – 02.07
Length
Four days, three nights · limited to [ number TBC ]
WHAT WE DO · 一起做什么

Not a Timetable of Heritage Activities

We follow New Year customs, a mountain feast, tea and incense, ceremony, handwork and the local culture of Tiantai — with craftspeople, heritage holders and fellow travellers all taking part.

Preparing

Making the food and objects a New Year needs, and learning the crafts still used to make them.

The Feast

One table in the mountains, and a real New Year's Eve dinner at it.

Around the Fire

Tea and warmed incense by the fire, seeing the year out together.

Customs

Local New Year customs and ceremony, done alongside the people who keep them.

Into the Hills

Temples, forest and winter light — a few hours of walking each day.

Empty Time

Enough time to walk, to talk, and actually to live alongside each other.

Among mountains and water, back into what reunion, the turning year, nature and renewal have always meant here.

WHAT'S INCLUDED · 席位含什么
¥12,999 per person · limited places
Three nights at KAI Tiantai
A private cultural itinerary
Sessions with heritage masters
Local New Year customs
The mountain feast
Tea and incense
New Year gifts
Programming by XENNI throughout

4–7 February 2027, four days and three nights, limited places. Once you apply we confirm the itinerary and payment with you on WeChat.

Apply for a place →
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ABOUT / A Thread That Has Never Broken
ABOUT XENNI · 关于齊間

A Thread That Has Never Broken

And the ones who will carry it are already on their way

A group of young people walking into China's living heritage, recording the crafts and memories that are going quiet.

—— I ——

What a Civilisation Entrusts

The historian Qian Mu wrote that a people's culture survives only so long as its spirit refuses to die. Nowhere is that truer than in intangible heritage, which is not a display of objects but a civilisation still breathing — the gesture a potter spent forty years refining, the landscape an old singer can summon in a single phrase, the rites of the seasons passed from hand to hand and never written down.

A civilisation continues not through its records but through what one person hands directly to another. Break that chain and the libraries remain, but they are shells. What cannot be copied — the transmission from person to person — is the whole of it.

China holds 1,557 items on its national heritage register, more than 3,600 at provincial level, and over forty inscribed by UNESCO — more than any other country. These are not statistics. They are a living archive, several thousand years deep, still held in ordinary hands.

Renew yourself daily; then daily again. But what is new must be rooted in what is old.
Without those roots the tree of a civilisation dries out long before anyone notices.
—— II ——

Why Transmission Is Fragile

Every civilisation is tested by time. Under industrialisation, urbanisation and now artificial intelligence, makers grow scarce and apprentices scarcer. There is a deep tension between the long patience a traditional craft demands and the immediacy of modern life. Masters take their craft with them not for want of willingness to teach, but for want of anyone to learn — not because the skill is obsolete, but because the ground it grows in has thinned.

When Qian Mu wrote about cultural decline he put the cause in one phrase: people turning away. A people that stops valuing what is its own is already half collapsed before any outside pressure arrives. The difficulty here is the same. The crafts have not lost their vitality; they have lost the conditions in which they are seen, valued and passed on.

The life of a culture is not in its halls of state but among ordinary people;
not in its classics, but in what people hold in their hearts.
—— III ——

What the Young Owe It

XENNI was started by students working across different fields and incubated at Peking University. We have no wish to call ourselves protectors. A civilisation does not need protecting; it needs to be understood, continued, and given a meaning that belongs to now.

What we build is a bridge: heritage out of the museum case and into the way young people actually live. Through immersive study and residential programmes, aimed at teenagers and students growing up in international settings, we want them not to hear about this inheritance but to meet it — with their hands, their senses and real work.

Qian Mu asked for two things in the face of one's own history: warmth, and respect. Without both, nothing is truly handed on. That is the standard we hold ourselves to.

THE TEAM · 团队

Who We Are

Eight of us, from Tsinghua and Peking University, brought together by one conviction — that heritage does not belong only in museums. From art history and design to law, management and film, each of us works at it a different way.

The XENNI team
Lin Leye
Lin Leye 林乐野
Brand & Creative
Tsinghua–Sotheby's, Art History & Criticism / Conservation · MA2
Records the vitality of culture on film, and keeps art tied to the society around it.
Ye Zichen
Ye Zichen 叶子晨
Visual Communication
Documentary and commercial director, cinematographer
Tells brand and cultural stories through the camera.
Xia Shen · Pasha
Xia Shen · Pasha 夏参 pasha
Design & Arts Management
Peking University, School of Arts · Year 3
Uses design thinking to carry ideas through to finished projects.
Xiang Langxin
Xiang Langxin 向朗昕
Finance & Operations
Peking University, Law / Guanghua School of Management · Year 3
Runs project finance and logistics; deeply experienced in planning and operations.
Li Bingfei
Li Bingfei 李冰菲
Student Experience & Academics
Peking University, Guanghua School of Management · Year 2
Researches how heritage education can sustain itself, and keeps our teaching sharp.
Han Danning
Han Danning 韩丹宁
Curriculum & Programme Design
Peking University, Guanghua School of Management · Year 2
Designs courses that are culturally serious and genuinely hands-on.
Liu Yuyang
Liu Yuyang 柳雨杨
Marketing & Business Model
Peking University, Cultural Industries / Business Administration · Year 4
Builds the business model and the logic behind how we grow.
Feng Lianyun
Feng Lianyun 俸莲云
Heritage Sector Research
Peking University, Guanghua School of Management · Visiting faculty, 2025
Studies where the craft sector actually stands, and what makes transmission fail.
A people that loses its cultural memory loses its soul.
We are not experts. We are young people who would rather not pretend we didn't hear.
XENNI · Young people for China's living heritage
United by Art · Fulfilled through People
United by Art · Fulfilled through People
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MY PROFILE
MY PROFILE · 我的档案

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Calligraphy · joined Jun 2025 · currently L1

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XENNI
齊 間
Not an exhibit. Something people still do.
Living Heritage, Not Museum Pieces
BEIJING NEW YORK
SCROLL
Applications open · Salon 01, 26 Sep✦Autumn Flowers · 24 Oct✦A Day at Tianzhen · 2 Oct✦
ABOUT · 我们是谁

A craft worth keeping
for the rest of your life

Not a crash course, not exam prep. We think anyone can find, at their own pace, one craft worth keeping for life.

8
crafts taught
2
cities · Beijing, New York, Hong Kong
L4
levels of certification
∞
for life
WHAT'S ON · 展览
See all →
CHECK-IN · 打卡体系

Four Levels, L1 to L4

Not fast, just regular. The first two levels are sharing; the last two are lineage.

I
First Acquaintance
L1 · sharing
II
Building Practice
L2 · sharing
III
Refining Your Own Work
L3 · lineage
IV
Ready to Teach
L4 · lineage
Go to check-in →
京
WHERE IT STARTED · 发源地
Beijing
Beijing, China

Rooted in the Tsinghua and Peking University communities, in the old red-walled hutongs: five crafts practised as an ordinary habit.

纽
2026 TOUR · 巡展
New York
New York, USA

September 2026, at Columbia and NYU — a Chinese tradition shown as something still alive.

REGISTRATION COMPONENTS

Every state and entry point

Button states

The same set is used bottom-right on cards and in the right column of detail pages; driven by the backend status field.
Apply →
open
Primary button, solid cinnabar
3 seats left →
few_left · 5 or fewer
As primary, with the count in the label
Join the waitlist
waitlist · full
Outlined button
Add our assistant for the waitlist
soon
Fallback before applications open
Applications closed
closed
Not clickable; stays in the list
Read the write-up →
past
Links to the field note
Drop in · standing
ongoing · standing
For things like morning Taiji
Submitted · awaiting reply
applied
Shown per person once signed in
Small tags used in lists: Open 3 seats left Opening soon In preparation Standing Past

The on-site form

Fields follow the 26 Sep announcement exactly, with a guardian added for events open to minors.
After submitting
1 · Writes to applications, status pending
2 · If not signed in, a XENNI account is created at the same time (existing Supabase auth) and the application attached to it
3 · The page switches to Submitted · awaiting reply and shows the assistant's QR code
4 · Once set to accepted, the event appears under My Profile → Upcoming
5 · At the end of the day a check-in is generated automatically and counted towards L1–L4 hours
Invitation-only events skip the form and go straight to the QR code.

QR modal

Opens on Scan to apply or any waitlist button; palace red, square corners, centred.
扫
SCAN TO APPLY
Scan to apply
×
Application QR code
Apply
Online form
Larisa's WeChat QR code
Larisa, our assistant
WeChat
QR codes are configured per event; expired ones hide themselves and fall back to the on-site form.
The two existing codes (decoded)
Apply
https://v.wjx.cn/vm/OiVW83q.aspx
Larisa · XENNI
https://u.wechat.com/kD_zpmhYyS0zaR7LtDeVZ10
Personal WeChat codes expire, so store the code with its expiry date and prompt for a new one a week ahead. The form link should be a button, not only a QR code.

Supabase schema

Sits on your existing auth; events go into the database too, so nothing is hard-coded in the front end.
events
id uuid pk
slug text uniq
title_zh text
title_en text
series text  -- salon | journey | lab
no int   -- 01 / 02 …
solar_term text  -- Frost's Descent / Light Snow
starts_at timestamptz
ends_at timestamptz
city, venue text
crafts text[]
capacity int
taken int
price_cents int null
status text  -- open | few_left | waitlist
              -- soon | closed | past | ongoing
apply_mode text  -- form | qr | both
form_url text  -- online form
qr_asset text · qr_expires_at date
applications
id uuid pk
event_id uuid → events
user_id uuid → auth.users null
name, phone text
profession text
organization text
nationality text null
craft text null
why text
is_minor bool
guardian_name text null
guardian_phone text null
status text  -- pending | accepted
              -- waitlisted | declined
source text  -- site | wjx | wechat
created_at timestamptz

accepted → writes a check_ins row, counted towards L1–L4
Two things to check:
· The live site marks the seven-day Culture Art Lab camp asOpen, but 15 Jul 2026 has passed. This version moves it to past work and puts the 26 Sep salon in the first card.
· The 26 Sep announcement's header says BEIJING · NEW YORK · HONG KONG, while the live site still says two cities. The salon and field-note pages now use three; I have left the home page's two-city block alone — your call whether it changes too.
XENNI · VISUAL FOUNDATIONS

Visual standards, taken from the live site

Colour

Palace red · gong-hong
#7A1E1E · primary blocks
Cinnabar · zhu-sha
#C0392B · the only action colour
Gold · jin
#A07830 · quotes and secondary emphasis
Ink · mo-se
#1C1208 · dark sections
Xuan white · xuan-bai
#F2EBD9 · page ground
Rice white · mi-bai
#FAF6EE · alternating sections
Warm grey · nuan-hui
#E8DEC8 · New York panel / placeholders
Pattern grey · wen-hui
#7A6A50 · captions
Ink purple · hei-zi
#37183B · the ticker band

One change only: body text in pattern grey #7A6A50 sits at 4.45:1 on xuan white, just short of AA. Small body text now uses #6B5C44(5.5:1); pattern grey is kept for captions and labels at 12px and above. Small gold text on dark sections uses #C9A85C。

Typography

Display · Spectral
Noto Serif SC 300
（Source Han Serif SC）
English
Spectral
display & italic
Body / interface
Noto Sans SC
PingFang SC
Small labels
9–10px · tracking 3–4px
齊 間
Wordmark · 80–130px · weight 300 · a 1.5px cinnabar rule down the centre
Not an exhibit. Something people still do.
Statement · 21px · tracking 0.35em
Living Heritage, Not Museum Pieces
English · Spectral Italic · 12–16px
A craft you keep for life
Section heading .st · clamp(28, 4vw, 44) · weight 300
Body 15px, line-height 1.75. Not a crash course, not exam prep. We think anyone can find, at their own pace, one craft worth keeping for life.

Components

齊 BEIJING Open See all →
Section eyebrow
9px · tracking 4px · cinnabar
over a 40×2px red rule
gold version on dark sections
Ticker
Grid: container max 1200px, 56px side padding; sections 100px top and bottom.
Cards are always square-cornered, with a gap of 3px(not 24px) — the most recognisable thing about this layout.
Rounding is only for pill tags (100px); buttons, cards and images are square. Tappable elements are at least 44px tall.
What changed in this version
The home page keeps its structure and copy; the layout is only tightened. The exhibition grid becomes 2fr/1fr/1fr with the first card spanning two rows; two new events join the news list; the check-in system gains the sharing / lineage split above the four levels.
New pages
Check-in, event detail, my profile and the event list. These were modals or unfinished on the live site; here they are pages of their own.
Prices, venues, names and capacities are written as [ bracketed placeholders ].
齊 XENNI · 齊間 ← Back to schedule
席
XENNI SALON 01 · APPLY FOR A SEAT

The Four Idle Pursuits of the Song

A Taste of Song
Saturday 26 September 2026 · 14:30–18:00 Heyuan space · 82 Zhuanta Hutong, Xicheng, Beijing 12 seats · by application Bilingual
¥398¥899First-table price, this one only
Larisa's WeChat QR code
Add Larisa first
Scan to add her on WeChat. Seats, timings and payment are all confirmed there — and if a form is a nuisance, just ask her directly.
Seasonal sweets from this table
The sweets for this table — one of each per person, eaten with the tea

Incense, whisked tea, a hanging scroll and flowers, around one long table in a hutong courtyard. Seats are limited and given by application — fill this in and we'll come back to you quickly.

Apply for a seat

Fields marked * are required
Please tell us your name
Please leave one way to reach you
Please tell us what you do
Please tell us where you work
Optional, but it lets us open your XENNI account
We do read this one — a line or two, please
Your application goes straight to us. Larisa replies within two working days, and attending counts towards your learning record.
Application received

Thank you. Larisa will reply on WeChat within two working days to confirm your seat.

Each beauty its own; each admiring the other's; and together, beauty for all. © 2025–2026 XENNI 齊間 · Beijing · New York · Hong Kong
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