Cam Rivers published Wonder and Art: Cambridge Conversations with Tim Yip in September 2023, after the two authors’ exchanges over Spring and Summer 2023. The book discusses approaches to life from an Eastern and Western perspective, as well as art, anthropology, history and Tim Yip’s journey from being a quiet pupil in Hong Kong to winning an Oscar for his art directorship. Please find more information about the authors below, as well as the introduction, penned by Alan Macfarlane.

About Tim Yip:

Timothy Yip Kam-tim (Chinese: 葉錦添) is a Hong Kong art director and designer for fiction films. He is best known for his work on the 2000 martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, for which he won the Oscar for Best Art Direction and Costume Design and the British Academy Film Award for Best Costume Design in 2000.

About Professor Alan Macfarlane

Alan Donald James Macfarlane FBA FRHistS is an anthropologist and historian, and a Professor Emeritus of King's College, Cambridge. He is the author or editor of 40 books and numerous articles on the anthropology and history of England, Nepal, Japan and China.He has focused on comparative study of the origins and nature of the modern world. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society.

Professor Alan Macfarlane met Tim Yip for the first time in January 2023, he penned the following into his diary:

A cool, crisp but sunny day. We spent most of it in Cambridge, going in by 11 o’clock to await the arrival of an amazing polymath artist, TIM YIP – see Wikipedia and his website. He arrived with a life-sized doll called Lili, who he takes everywhere, again see films on her on YouTube, etc. And then i interviewed him for 45 minutes, life digging down into ancient China. he was reliving the dynasties before Laozi and talked like a shaman, about parallel worlds, spirits, multiple vision and so much more. Sitting with me, giving a copy of Letters to Lily to Lili and talking to her. Felt a strange affinity with his ideas. A brother spirit. Very strange. He is famous, for his designs for costumes and sets for Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, etc. Look forward to another visit. Zilan seemed delighted, as did Sarah.

That account catches a number of the elements of what turned into six conversations, spread over a number of months, in which Tim and Alan talked to each other. After the first session, which was an interview, they decided tat it would be more interesting to turn it into a dialogue, whereby Alan would ask Tim a couple of questions and he would ask Alan a couple. That worked extremely well. During the first dialogue session, they were getting beginning to get to know each other, and so it was a little more constrained. But as trust, knowledge and understanding grew, it turned into something really deep and meaningful.

There were a number of problems in this communication. Some of them were on Alan’s side. He is not an expert in either art, art history, design , film or any of the subjects Tim mainly talked about. Nor is he an expert on Chinese aesthetics and ancient Chinese philosophy. So, he was well out of his depth on many occasions. Yet the fascination of the subject made Alan struggle on.

On Tim’s side, obviously, there were also great difficulties. one was that he was trying to talk about things at a level of the deep subconscious, which if you try to bring up into explicit language, you lose and distort. That’s obviously a problem that all artists face when describing their work. How can one describe painting or music in language? So, Tim faced that proble, which was exacerbated by the fact that he wasn’t just an ordinary artist, but someone who was trying to go deep into a layer and level which many artists don’t even dream about. Struggling to bring that up and then to translate it into English, which he has learned when he had been a child but was not his first language, was another difficulty. And yet he succeeded extremely well.

Those combined difficulties meant that occasionally they talked past each other. on other occasions, Tim would say very interesting things, but Alan couldn’t at the time entirely understand them. As a result, Alan had to guess, sometimes wrongly, and often he missed the clues which someone else might have followed and gone onto a very interesting line of questioning. Tim also didn’t know much about Alan’s world, yet it seemed that his curiosity had been sparked, and he seemed genuinely interested in a lot of what Alan was saying.

The result, which was in the form of six filmed interviews, was then transcribed using a software based on a LLM. Irene Galstian did a magnificent job editing and simplifying the texts. The book is a tribute to her skill. It is also an indication of the fact that, despite the huge differences between the philosophies and the aesthetics of East and West, there was enough in common between Tim and Alan to make for a meaningful conversation.

Certainly, Alan learnt a huge amount about Chinese art and thought. it was a rare privilege to go inside the mind of someone who, described above, is a polymath, a photographer, a designer, a curator, a filmmaker, and much more. Alan found Tim to be versatile, interesting, unassuming, gentle and friendly. So, it was a strange, difficult buy hugely rewarding experience. Alan and Tim explored the borderlands between rationality and enchantment, which has been shattered to a large extent by modernity, giving Tim and Alan a common goal. They are both interest in exploring how and why the world is filled with wonderful and wondrous things. That is why the sub-title of the book is Wonder and Art. Tim’s life, and Alan’s, are filled with wonder at the strangeness and beauty of life.

Tim approaches this strangeness through many different forms of art, and Alan approaches it through academic disciplines, particularly anthropology and history, in order to try to understand and communicate what he finds. So, their methods are different, but in the end their goal is not dissimilar, namely to re-enter enchantment and see how it fits in this modern, fragmented world.

We hope that readers enjoy what we have produced, also with the enormous help of Zilan Wang, who arranged the conversations. Further thanks is given to Levente Koroes, who helped with the technical side, Tim’s PA Yushan Guo, who filmed and helped us take Lili for lunches in King’s College. Sarah Harrison checked the texts with her customary skill, and the MUYE Studio for their excellent work on designing the book.

Both the paperback and hardcover editions of this book are available for purchase on Amazon. Click here to order a copy.

We extend our sincere appreciation to the following teams for their substantial contributions to the editing, design, and management of this book.

Honorary Editor: Professor Alan Macfarlane FBA

Editor-in-Chief: WANG Zilan

Editors: Irene Galstian, QIN Yuchen

Student Editors: Sifan Guo, Yolanda Yujia Yan, Casey Niu, Sirui Guo, Kara Cao, Qianhao Han, Luofan Gan

Project Coordinators: LI Yue, Levente Koroes

Cover Photo by GUO Yushan

Cover Design: GE Dalong (MUYE)

Design and Typeset: QIN Yubin (MUYE)

Copyright of the Content © The Authors

Copyright of the Graphic Design © Cam Rivers Publishing Copyright of the Content and Illustration © Alan Macfarlane ,Tim Yip

The publishing of this book is supported by the Vanishing Worlds Foundation, U.K and Rivers Project, King’s College, Cambridge

ISBN: 978-1-916858-04-6

Contact: press@cambridgerivers.com

www.cambridgerivers.com