The Department of Architecture of the University of Pennsylvania is the only university in the United States that focuses on architectural art, the Chinese of the Republic of China period likes to go to this university to study architecture, Liang Sicheng is a student here, the architecture department of this university does not accept female students, Lin Huiyin refused to give up his love for architecture so he went to the Fine Arts Department to take an elective architecture, and after returning to China, he was the first female architect in China.
Liang Sicheng and Lin Hui have been studying and protecting architectural relics all their lives, and Liang Sicheng wrote a report during the war, which indicated where there were architectural relics that needed to be protected, hoping that the front could pay attention to it and not let these static art be destroyed by gunfire. However, what Liang Sicheng and his wife did not expect was that some architectural relics were not destroyed in the war, but were destroyed in urban planning.
After the end of the war, the rate of population growth accelerated, and there was a crowded situation in Beijing, with several children in a family and a family nestled in a small room, which seemed to be not spacious enough for people to live in. At the same time, at the beginning of the founding of New China, everything was in ruins and was in urgent need of economic development, and the thick walls of Beijing limited development.
The walls of Beijing were built in the Yuan Dynasty and completed during the Ming Dynasty, and were mainly used by ancient people to defend against foreign enemies. If it is placed in the present, its grand scale and momentum can not be compared with any city in Paris and Rome, but at that time, whether the city wall should be demolished became a headache.
At that time, regarding its whereabouts, Liang Sicheng and Lin Hui advocated not demolishing. At that time, Liang Sicheng also wrote a 25,000-word "Liang Chen Plan" with architectural expert Chen Zhanxiang. This plan combined the world's advanced urban development concept at that time, and they proposed that the old city should be retained in its entirety, and some new houses should be built in the western suburbs of Beijing, so that people in the city can move there to alleviate housing pressure and traffic pressure.
And Guo Moruo is a person who advocates demolition, he believes that the walls of Beijing can be defended against foreign enemies for the ancients, but modern weapons are all aircraft cannons. For people today, the walls made of earth and brick cannot play a defensive role and should be demolished. In addition, he also believes that the city wall is a product of the old era, it should be broken and welcomed, and the demolition of the city wall will no longer block the road and will not block the vehicles. Liang Sicheng refuted Guo Moruo's achievements and proposed to solve the problem of traffic: the builder can solve it by opening a few more city gates according to the specific conditions of the field, and the traffic flow also needs to be adjusted, and the traffic flow can be used to concentrate the traffic flow on several main roads.
Liang Sicheng Guo Moruo two different voices collided with each other, the famous historian Wu Han was on Guo Moruo's side, Lin Huiyin was 49 years old at the time, suffering from severe lung disease, it was very hard to speak, but she still pointed at Wu Han's nose and loudly condemned, and later she said it all, she said: "Thanks to you are still a historian, you will regret it in the future." "The city wall of Beijing was finally decided to be demolished, since 1952 it has been demolished one after another, and the outer city wall has been demolished within a few years, Liang Sicheng saw this scene and was heartbroken, seeing that these walls were demolished, as if his flesh had been dug up.
On the other side of the world, Spain's Lugo City Wall was rated as a cultural heritage by the United Nations in 2000, if the Beijing City Wall was not demolished, but preserved under the suggestion of Liang Sicheng, maybe the Beijing City Wall can also be rated as a World Cultural Heritage, but time cannot be turned back, and the Beijing City Wall will not become the original form again.