Dunzi (‘墩子’Chinese Pinyin, meaning homemade concrete blocks, or Do-It-Yourself Stone or DIY Stone, as what we refer to in this book), which are not usually noticeable though, used to be commonly seen in the street of many Chinese cities. Unlike natural ones, all those artificial stones in the book were made to meet various needs in cities and then weathered as time went by. They like the underdeveloped primitive tools in modern society, could be the remnants of the current era to be remembered in the future. A friend of mine described them as a special kind of “People's Monument”, on which the traces of daily usage form the “inscriptions” written by people in their time.

Photos of the 151 homemade concrete blocks are presented on the book jacket of “151 Do-It-Yourself Stones”. Some photos have been indexed so readers can access more details on relevant pages in the book. As the book jacket is well-thumbed, the paper becomes easily creased and marked——just like the surface of any used Dunzi.









This is a leading question on the cover and an implicit question for readers: what else we have missed in our life?