▤Pdf Bricks: On Materiality

Translated in 1959.

Translations of technical handbooks like this one reveal the process of knowledge transfer from the Soviet Union to the PRC during the 1950s. This example details the required conditions for mass-producing high-quality earthenware bricks. Importantly, it also provides a sense of the time interval required to translate such material into Chinese following its original publication in the Soviet Union—in this case, three years. Frustration over such time lag contributed to official perceptions that China needed to intensify the pace of its own modernization, which prompted the launching of the Great Leap Forward beginning in 1959.

This scrapbook of brick chimney design materials was assembled by a state-owned, locally administered engineering company based in Liaoning, and provides numerous notes, reports, drawings, diagrams, and calculations testifying to the challenges presented by new types of material production and construction practices being introduced into China by the late 1950s. Determining the optimal dimensions of structures like chimneys was vital to ensuring they would perform as expected, particularly in relation to variables such as site-specific load-bearing capacities and wind flow.