Teenage mutant ninja turtles have not yet faded away, jigsaw puzzles are the rage with all generations, and electronic games are still hot property. A look at the market for toys in Taiwan shows two main trends: the large scale American style toy stores, and shops selling specialist Japanese products. Where do Chinese toys fit into all of this?

Into the picture comes Chang Shih-tsung, an associate professor, no more than forty years old, who has been collecting Chinese toys for around half his life. Like a child who never grew up, Chang still takes great pleasure in the "wisdom of toys," but beyond this he is also devoted to finding new life for traditional Chinese toys, so that children everywhere can share in the enjoyment of them.

In the National Toy Exhibition held this July, the Taiwan Toy Manufacturers Association presented an exhibit of antiques called The Museum of Toys to which manufacturers and collectors were invited to contribute toys from twenty and thirty years ago in Taiwan. The issue of stamps on the theme of toys by the ROC Post Office was another event that led many of us down memory lane for a moment or two, and which sparked a mad rush of stamp purchasing in Singapore.

Traditional educational toys from even further back though, such as ho-shih-tzu, chin-ch'an-t'o-k'e, and kuei-fei-ch'eng, are unknown even by name to most people nowadays. Even those like the tangram and the "nine joined rings," that are still known, have faded from living use, and only remain in the old books to edify us.

But there is a man who intends to provide them with new life in modern society. Chang Shih-tsung is an associate professor of no more than forty years old, who has been collecting toys for half his life and has done research into them.

Leaving behind the bustling night market in Yungho, you pass into a quieter neighborhood and climb to Chang's fourth floor apartment. But the image of the night market returns for a flash as you step in the door and are met by the scene of wall-to-wall books and shelves within. "Tidiness is the sign of a sick soul," mutters Chang in English, suitably introducing himself.

Chang Shih-tsung's collection of Chinese educational toys fills several trunks, including imitation antique styles and teaching aids, as well as similar toys from other countries. As they are spread out before you on the table, you seem to be taken back through a time tunnel to the China of old, when games like "nine joined rings," the "fairy's shuttle" and "five sons in a square" were still popular forms of recreation. In Chang's hands they come back to life.

The object of "nine joined rings" is to get all nine rings over a hairpin, but it cannot be done unless you know the secret. With Chang murmuring the instructions written in former times though, the puzzle is soon solved.

In "fairy's shuttle" the idea is to bring together two coins at separate ends of a piece of wood, the difficulty being that the coins apparently have to pass through a hole that is smaller than they, like passing a camel through the eye of a needle--something that maybe only a fairy can accomplish. Chang however twists the strings turning them inside out, and miraculously the coins are joined without passing through the hole.

It obviously takes some unusual reasons for a young person to become interested in antique toys. Says Chang: "There is a sense of mission to this." At senior high school he began as a collector of bamboo musical instruments, straw toys, chopstick guns and so on, having seen how quickly television was catching on and supplanting many traditional children's toys. His fondness for children also inspired him to think up games to play with them, and when he discovered the educational toys that were used by our ancestors he began collecting them too.

In order to learn how to use them he had to look into all kinds of written materials on the subject, from home and abroad, and made an interesting discovery for himself about the different treatment these educational toys have received in China and the West.

"Traditional educational toys appeared in wood, metal and cotton thread in their common guise, and perhaps in ivory or gold at court, but because they were always seen as brilliant curiosities having no connection with officialdom, they rarely made it into written history." Many have been lost forever, "but those 'brilliant curiosities' that got taken abroad became regarded as treasures, or even became objects for study by mathematicians."

It is a classic example of "being loved by someone else's parents, not your own." So what is the special attraction for foreigners?"

The lateral thinking skills of our ancestors were quite astonishing," says Chang. He refers to the classical tale "Han-hsin Musters Soldiers" and the Chinese remainder theorem which can be derived from it, which easily solves problems of algebraic simultaneous equations.

In Science and Civilization in China, Joseph Needham cites the "nine joined rings" and the tangram as exemplars of Chinese educational games. In Italy, France and Britain "nine joined rings" became known as "the key without a lock," and binary code for the solution of each step of the nine rings can be generated by the Gray Code, invented only this century. The mathematical formula for its solution was deduced at a math contest in Moscow.

The tangram meanwhile, though only consisting of seven slim cutout shapes, "can be formed into any shape or letter with just a little imagination," as our forebears found out. Very different from today's equivalent--with only one correct solution--the jigsaw puzzle.

In addition to mathematical research, Chang Shih-tsung has made discoveries of his own. One concerns the origin of the English word "tangram," about which opinions have been divided--was it invented by T'ang people, or perhaps by a Mr. Tang? Formerly the tangram was a game based on the positioning together of different sized tea tables during the Sung and Ming dynasties, "but Joseph Needham suggests that the name stems from the appearance of Chinese windows. Then I realized that the word 'window' in Hokien, Cantonese and Hakka sounds similar to 'tang.' Perhaps the latticed design of Chinese window grills reminded foreigners of the tangram," says Chang with excitement.

If this were all there was to Chang Shih-tsung's interest in old toys, then it is possible he would be just another eccentric collector. But his idea is to introduce these educational games to modern society. "Not by dragging them forcefully into the present," but by using intelligent toys to introduce the intelligence of toys. "Like in chapter ten of Laotzu where it says that a vessel only has use as a vessel in the part where it is empty, and not at the edges." Chang continues: "The idea is not who plays better or solves it quicker, but to stimulate the child's interest in understanding the toy and its method."

The "fairy's shuttle" is a good example of a toy that promotes lateral thinking. "Even though the coins cannot get through the hole, we get the strings to do it for us. It sounds like there is nothing to this technique, but it has real application when it comes to topology."

Topology is a branch of mathematics which investigates the relationships within a system when the whole configuration is subject to a transformation. The concept can be used to turn a problem around, and lead to a ready solution by avoiding what is at the surface of the problem. In the story by Lu Hsun, Ah Q uses a topological principle to get one up on the world when he is locked in a cage, by sneering at those outside for being locked in an even bigger cage. Chang Shih-tsung means to use principles from topology to include some profound mathematical notions in games that are simple and fun. For example, a simple number guessing card helps you to guess people's age correctly and astound them, by using the concept of binary numbers.

Chang speaks fast and enthusiastically on the subject. Presumably you need to be very smart yourself to maintain a continuous interest in the intelligence puzzles left us by our ancestors. "Sorry, but my 'forgetfulness' is very bad," quips fasttalking Chang, whose words seem unable to keep up with his thoughts. With a good memory and a wide scope of interests, Chinese toys are in fact only one of many fascinations he has. Papier mache, photography and puppetry have all grabbed him at one time or other, and he doesn't give up until fully conversant in the field. Also he has exhaustively built up collections of the relevant books, and has all the information he needs at his fingertips.

Applying mental reasoning Chang Shih-tsung is adept at finding lateral links between things, using supporting material and coming up with new deductions. Starting from a rapid-fire "chopstick gun" invented by Taiwanese kids, he began to collect toy weapons from other countries and investigate their construction and performance. From our own history he found a rapid-fire crossbow from the Three Kingdoms Period, and has written a short paper on the subject. As to promotion, Chang Shih-tsung is in no rush to commercialize. He prefers to point out that the emphasis is on teaching people to make things themselves. He has been invited to write newspaper articles and publish a book, and has lectured on education through creative toys.

These are all things he has "experimented" with on his university students. He has taught design method at the graduate school of fine arts at National Taiwan Normal University, and at Chung-Yuan Christian University, his alma mater, he started up a course in creativity and design principles at the departments of architecture, commercial design and interior design. He once required his students to experiment with dropping an egg from the third floor without breaking it, encouraging them to break down self-imposed patterns of set thinking, then having them write a creativity report. Within moments the room was full of cigarettes and playing cards, as students and teacher began to enjoy themselves. But then came the mild warning not to overdo the playing.

Should learning always be a solemn business? In fact Chang Shih-tsung wants the notion of "learning through games" to be used even more thoroughly. "I might step down from some of my teaching duties. Formal education overemphasizes recognition memory, so that when a child comes to us with a question mark we stuff a full stop down him, smothering the exclamation mark that may be in him yet." His intention from now on is to dedicate himself to "informal learning," chiefly at the preschool level, and it is in this context that Chinese educational toys have a role. To outsiders Chang may seem to be heading in the wrong direction in moving from university level to preschool education. But as far as he is concerned he remains consistent. His friendship for children goes back a long way. Su Ai-chiu, head of the experimental kindergarten at National Cheng-chi University, describes Chang as suffering from "child cancer." "He is a very unusual man, full of childlike enthusiasm, for whom humanity and learning are merged in the children."

The first child he made friends with came to know Chang when he was showing off his skating skills at an ice-rink as a senior high school student. Chang went on to study architecture at university and work in an architects' office, and by the time he went to New York to continue his studies his young acquaintances numbered at least one thousand. With a careful eye for the intellectual requirements of children, he often loads up a backpack with "nine joined rings" and spinning tops to teach them to play with, as well as conjuring tricks and toys made by his own hand.

Chen Chien-an, an architectural worker and one of that first generation of children to be inspired by Chang Shih-tsung, recalls: "Many little children at that time were influenced by him. For them studying was not boring and unprofitable, and they could always learn contentedly." At senior high school Chen once won first prize in the school science exhibition, applying a principle learned from the "nine joined rings."

Twenty years on those children are now grown up, and many are married. But "Uncle Chang" as he is known to their own kids still hasn't made a family of his own. "If you give a child a dime he gets ten dollars, and that makes you very happy. But the dimes mount up and I can't ignore the total." In the last two years Chang has seen quality yield to quantity, and so has decided to change pace, and not be in such a hurry to work directly with the children. Instead he has begun to seek more influential channels to work through.

His biggest dream has been to build a children's museum where his interests and skills will be best combined. In fact it is an objective that he is well prepared for. His design project at the graduate school of architecture at the Pratt Institute in New York, was "the design of a children's museum." Following that he took his MA degree in media design and production at Columbia, and finally gained an educational doctorate in instructional design and media systems. His training thus embraces three disciplines: construction design, general design and overall planning.

"Most museums say 'Please do not touch.' My children's museum will have signs saying 'Please touch,' and children will be welcome to touch, stroke and play with the exhibits, for a multi-sensory direct experience-type of learning." Although the museum is still just a castle in the air, a prototype for it can be seen in the "flexible zone" he designed as consultant for the Shin Yi Foundation's Parents and Prescholers' Place, and also at the provincial museum's "exploration room."

From Chinese children's toys onwards, it seems that the prospect of a "children's kingdom" is taking shape. It all stems from a concept of Chang Shih-tsung's: "The world is like a vast stage, and as soon as you are born you join the queue to pass across it. No matter if you are a big hero or not, at the end you still have to make way for the newcomers. And the new generation depend on the teaching from their predecessors as to whether they turn out better or worse." And as Chang believes, the tangram, the "nine joined rings," the "fairy's shuttle" and the others, all have a role to play in this teaching.

[Picture Caption]

Chang Shih-tsung has lived among educational toys for 20 years, and never tires of them. He means to give them new life in modern society.

Chang has closely studied the "nine joined rings," and once made an entertaining model based on the principle of the rings.

The Goose Illusion Compendium, which was published in 1889, introduces the "fairy's ferry," the "fairy's lock" and the "fairy's shuttle" together, since they work on the same idea, and when you understand one you can understand them all.

A chopstick gun that fires tens of rubber bands in succession, invented by children in Taiwan. Chang Shih-tsung found its predecessor in an old volume: a repeat-firing crossbow of the Three Kingdoms period.

(Left) Tangram "calligraphy," the ingenious handiwork of Yen Li-fang in the late Ch'ing dynasty. He could also arrange the tangram into lines from poems.

"Mandarin duck buckle," one of the magic Chinese rings, said to be how a maiden tested the intelligence of her prospective husband. He only passed the test if he could separate the rings.

Intellectual toys invented by our ancestors, which spread overseas and became foreign treasures.

Chang loves kids, and understands their intellectual needs. He often makes toys himself and gives them out to children.

One of Chang's best skills is paper pop outs, and he once had an individual exhibition at the Manhattan Experimental Museum. Children call him Uncle Magic.

The "flexible zone" designed by Chang Shih-tsung for the Shinyi Foundation Parents' and Preschoolers' Place, which changes themes with the season. "The Magic of Light" is the current display, which helps children to learn through games.

Chang has closely studied the "nine joined rings," and once made an entertaining model based on the principle of the rings.

The Goose Illusion Compendium, which was published in 1889, introduces the "fairy's ferry," the "fairy's lock" and the "fairy's shuttle" together, since they work on the same idea, and when you understand one you can understand them all.

（Left） Tangram "calligraphy," the ingenious handiwork of Yen Li-fang in the late Ch'ing dynasty. He could also arrange the tangram into lines from poems.

A chopstick gun that fires tens of rubber bands in succession, invented by children in Taiwan. Chang Shih-tsung found its predecessor in an old volume: a repeat-firing crossbow of the Three Kingdoms period.

"Mandarin duck buckle," one of the magic Chinese rings, said to be how a maiden tested the intelligence of her prospective husband. He only passed the test if he could separate the rings.

Intellectual toys invented by our ancestors, which spread overseas and became foreign treasures.

Chang loves kids, and understands their intellectual needs. He often makes toys himself and gives them out to children.

One of Chang's best skills is paper pop outs, and he once had an individual exhibition at the Manhattan Experimental Museum. Children call him Uncle Magic.

The "flexible zone" designed by Chang Shih-tsung for the Shinyi Foundation Parents' and Preschoolers' Place, which changes themes with the season. "The Magic of Light" is the current display, which helps children to learn through games.