He began as a bridge designer who refused to be confined to the drafting board. Teaching himself to programme, he led the development of China's first proprietary CAD system for highway engineering. As a project management executive, he gave nine prime years to the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge. Then, captivated by the institutional economics of Steven N.S. Cheung and his sense that he had touched the hidden ciphers of how societies actually work, he turned to education — and found, in the act of teaching, a new structural design philosophy that became three books.

A SIPA-contracted photographer, an accidental writer, a researcher at Shanghai Sanda University: Chris Chai moves between disciplines the way water finds its own level. His eleven papers on AI cognitive architecture draw on information theory, evolutionary game theory, and the economics of Hayek, Coase, and Cheung.

Now, in the age of AI, his curiosity remains the one constant. Sixty years have slipped past without warning. He looks back on a life of relentless pursuit — and finds, to his quiet satisfaction, that the road still goes on.