Chinese Pagodas on the World Stage: Models from the Tushanwan Orphanage, 1915

This book tells the remarkable tale of a set of 84 model pagodas made at the Tushanwan Orphanage in Shanghai. An extraordinary combination of cultures and historical intentions, they depicted monuments of traditional Chinese culture for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, a world’s fair held in San Francisco in 1915.

The models show not only Buddhist pagodas but also an Islamic minaret, feng shui literary towers, and defensive structures, in a wide variety styles and materials, dating from the Tang to the Qing. Now in the collection of the Asian Civilisations Museum, they are a vital architectural archive that preserves these structures as they stood at the turn of the twentieth century.