While at the Tsinghua College, a preparatory school attended by Chinese students who would be sent to study in the United States, he was a member of the college art club and chorus, an editor of the college magazine and led the college marching band. He once won the first prize in a high-jump competition.

His quest to learn new things and his cross-disciplinary passion contributed to his field research in his later years.

He also trained his students at Tsinghua to be architects with an aesthetic consciousness.