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Throughout history the Chinese have made amazing things: from intricate
bridges of a myriad identical elements to works of art in multiples of
thousands. Lothar Ledderose examines mass manufacture and the system of modules
that lies at its heart in Ten Thousand Things. Fascinating stuff, as he
connects the development of written Chinese—a system of simple elements
repeated and assembled in various ways to give a rich orthography—with
mass manufacture itself. Published by Princeton University Press, £23.95,
ISBN 0691006695.