[DSB] We’d had a good experience in Japan and Korea. Everyone in the world was building a building in China. We thought there could be opportunity there. We had this associate, Wai Li, who Bob knew well and liked. And he specifically invited him to go there to be on a jury. We thought this would be a good opportunity to see China with the help of a friend. And then, Wai Li probably organised that we would come the second time to be… help with the master plan. And so, those were the reasons we went. The research that we did by having three trips to China made us echo the thing that Mark Wigley said, ‘Every architect has been to China… yes indeed… to build a bad building’. And we decided by our experience there and from our architect in our firm, Ke Feng, that we had to be very choosy about the projects we would take there because we are a small firm and we’re very vulnerable. We couldn’t take a project where we could easily lose a great deal of money. And we needed to find one where we could trust the client and where we’d be dealt with in a way we’re used to being dealt with. And by the time we left China, we felt there would be a way to do a project but it would still… we did a project we did the plan for Tsinghua, but to do another project we’d have to wait a long time before there was one that was suitable. We think the one that Dalian… The Dalia Road [sic], is a suitable project. We hope it happens. We haven’t found another.

Have you been offered projects that you’ve turned down in China?

[DSB] We offered one and we tried to comply, but by the time we showed them what we needed to be architects there, they said, you can’t comply with our conditions, we can’t hire you. Their conditions were that you sign a contract within about three days of being asked for one thing. But we did feel that if the firms in Hong Kong that we talked to started to build in China, they could be interested in us and we could be interested in them.

Have you heard anything back from those firms?

[DSB] No, not at all. And you mustn’t forget that they also looked at us and said, ‘These are old people’.