Li Zhuang
As a waterway station in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River
It is a place of contention between soldiers and families in history
Winter of 1940
Several idols were lifted out of Lizhuang's temple
It was never carried back
But in the rumbling artillery fire of the War of Resistance
It ushered in the collective settlement of Chinese intellectuals
The literati scattered into the land like dandelions
Inside, there is a generation of architectural masters of the China Construction Society
In the past, the vast majority of Chinese people did not know li zhuang's name
Later, the global letter only needs to write "China Lizhuang"
It will be delivered smoothly
On the morning of April 26
Lizhuang Cultural Anti-Japanese War Museum, China Construction Society Exhibition Hall
Officially opened in Lizhuang Ancient Town
With rich humanistic nourishment
Recreate the story of the cultural war of resistance that watches over each other
Follow the view to the "pavilion" on Lizhuang
Take a screenshot of the treasure behind old photos
Customize a "menu" for you
Today's China Construction Society Exhibition Hall
Let's start with the deciphering of a "book of heaven."
"ISO9001 Quality Assurance System" during the Northern Song Dynasty
At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, China was driven away by the globalization of colonialism, and Western architecture began to prevail in China. At that time, Western scholars believed that the backbone of the "history of world architecture" was Greece and Rome, and the architecture of modern European countries was also developed from this trunk, while the oriental architecture of China, Japan and other countries was some small branches without details.
In 1919, Zhu Qizhao, a government official in Beiyang, China, was appointed as the general representative of the north and south peace talks in the north, and the peace talks at that time did not go well, which eventually led to his withdrawal from politics. But a small episode during this period opened another window in Zhu Qizhao's life, and he stumbled upon the Northern Song Dynasty Li Jie's book "Building the French Style" in the Jiangnan Library in Nanjing.
What book is this? In the more than 100 years after the founding of the Northern Song Dynasty, in the process of large-scale construction, it was inevitable that there would be corruption problems of false reports and false estimates and cutting corners. In order to strengthen supervision, Song Shenzong ordered the compilation of this set of "Construction French Style", which is equivalent to a normative guide for architectural design and construction, which also combs the experience of craftsmen in practical operation, which you can think of as the "ISO9001 quality assurance system" during the Northern Song Dynasty. This is the most complete architectural technology book in ancient China, like a key to open the study of traditional Chinese architecture, which inspired the establishment of the Later China Construction Society and its team.
Liang Sicheng said, "I can't understand it."
In 1925, after the publication of Tao Ben's "Building the French Style", Zhu Qiju sent a copy to his friend Liang Qichao. With extremely high academic sensitivity, Liang Qichao saw the value of this book at a glance, and immediately sent it to Liang Sicheng, his son who studied in the Department of Architecture of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, instructing him to study this ancient book carefully and continue the bloodline of traditional Chinese architecture. However, the book casually cites a few terms, "horn pillar arising", "from the forehead", "calculating the heart", "single bucket only for the sake"... They are as unpredictable as the joint code. "Like a book in heaven", this is liang Sicheng's feeling of reading "Building French Style" for the first time, like the meme that is very hot today, "I can't understand it, but I am greatly shocked".
Liang Sicheng studied Western architecture and achieved excellent results, but he has always had an ideal - to write Chinese his own architectural history. "Building the French Style" is a difficult hurdle that Liang Sicheng must have crossed. From the age of 25, his thoughts on the book accompanied Liang Sicheng for the rest of his life, and he even named his son "Congjie"—meaning "following Li Zhi". In 1928, Liang Sicheng returned to China to establish the Department of Architecture of Northeastern University, and then moved to Beijing due to the Japanese invasion of Northeast China and joined the China Construction Society founded by Zhu Qizhao.
A couplet encourages "moving bricks"
In the spring of 1930, a private academic group was quietly established in a private house at No. 7 Baozhuzi Hutong in Beiping. There was no sign at the door, there were only three tables and a few chairs in the house, and at first there were only three people working every day. This team is the China Construction Society, which has a far-reaching influence in Chinese academia. President Zhu Qiju waved a pair of opening couplets with a large pen, "Is it a judgment is a ruler, such as a discussion like a grind", encouraging the members to respect and carry forward the spirit of craftsmen, and contribute to changing the context of the Western-dominated architectural system. As a result, the China Construction Society began the journey of "moving bricks" with the deciphering and interpretation of "Construction French Style" as the starting point.
Liang Sicheng, a new member of the team, proposed, "To understand the ancient times, we should start from modern times and modern times; to study the Song "Construction Of The French Style", we should start with the "Engineering Practice Rules" of the Ministry of Qing Gong; to understand these great works, we should start from the living people who have taught the industry, the old craftsmen. Speaking of doing it, Liang Sicheng really worshiped the former Forbidden City craftsmen Yang Wenqi, Zu Hezhou, Lu Jiantang and others as teachers, using ancient architecture as teaching materials and specimens, and slowly learning those inexplicable terms through the master's personal identification and explanation.
More than 70 years later, Lu Fengtai, the nephew of lu Jiantang, a great carpenter in the Forbidden City, still remembers that every Sunday, Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin would visit their uncle, "At that time, I didn't understand it, I knew that people were coming to visit." At that time, I was quite naughty, my aunt asked me to call that girl (Lin Huiyin) gu, I said I called my sister, let me call Liang Sicheng uncle, I said I called it big brother. Professor Mo Zongjiang, who entered the Construction Society at the same time, also recalled before his death, "Mr. Liang's work is characterized by a strong sense of planning, and when a topic comes, he can quickly formulate a plan and implement it completely according to the plan." His book "Qing Style Construction Rules" is to learn from the Qing Gong Department's "Engineering Practice Rules" while learning from the old craftsman, the process of learning will draw out, only twenty days to draw a large stack, I go to see his homework every day, a big pile is too surprised. ”
The scribe went out to collect the wind
In order to break through the mystery of "Building the French Style", it is indispensable to grasp the logic of the ancient Chinese buildings, conduct field investigation and mapping. In the spring of 1932, Liang Sicheng and his younger brother Liang Sida, who was still studying, opened the first stop of fieldwork, the Dule Temple in Jixian County, Hebei Province. The temple was built 116 years before the publication of The Construction of the French Style, which is completely different from the Ming and Qing architectural styles that Liang Sicheng was familiar with before.
In ancient Chinese architecture, the roof ridge decoration is constantly changing, the Tang Dynasty is a fin-shaped tail, and the Song Dynasty is a kiss, lacking the intermediate process of change. At that time, Dule Temple had two single buildings - the Mountain Gate and the Guanyin Pavilion, and the roof ridge of the mountain gate was the tail style, that is, the upper fin shape and the lower part was the kiss type, which was exactly the example of the transition between the Tang and Song Dynasties; the "Pavilion" was a two-story building, its bucket arch was large and strong, and the various bucket arches also bore different practicalities, and Liang Sicheng had only seen it in dunhuang murals before.
The investigation of dule temple vividly answered many of Liang Sicheng's doubts about the terminology of "Constructing the French Style", for example, a combination method of the dou arch is called "stealing the heart", a material on the dou arch is 'substitute wood', a treatment method of the column is called "corner pillar arising", and so on. After the inspection, he drew a stunning "Watercolor Rendering Of the South Façade of Guanyin Pavilion of Dule Temple in Jixian County", and with the assistance of Lin Huiyin, completed the "Guanyin Pavilion Mountain Gate Examination of Dule Temple in Jixian County", and put the Dule Temple in the architectural systems of Tang, Song, Ming and Qing to compare, which is also the first time that Chinese used scientific methods to analyze and study the investigation report of ancient architecture. This article caused a great shock in the industry, after all, foreign scholars have always believed that Chinese do not understand surveying and mapping.
After the victory of the first battle, Liang Sicheng and colleagues of the China Construction Society became more and more enthusiastic about mapping ancient buildings on the ground, and in the past seven years, they have successively crossed several provinces in China, traveled to hundreds of cities and counties, and found the last Tang Dynasty building Foguang Temple, which provided valuable first-hand information for Liang Sicheng to write the "History of Chinese Architecture" in the future.
A small blessing in the moon field
In 1940, after Tongji University, the China Construction Society, the Central Museum, the Academia Sinica and other institutions were moved to Lizhuang. Liang Sicheng and Lin Hui, because of the rich information that enabled the China Construction Society to "rub" the Institute of History and Linguistics of the Academia Sinica nearby, decided to set up camp in Shangba Village, Lizhuang Town, and chose the site in the Courtyard of the Zhang family deep in the bamboo forest, where there is also a poetic name "Moon Field".
The living conditions here are much more difficult than imagined, water has to be picked up in the pond outside the village, and even kerosene lamps are too "modern" luxuries, and they can only rely on vegetable oil lamps at night, let alone adequate food and vegetable supplies. One day, Liang Sicheng accidentally got some tomato seeds from Chengdu, went home and planted them in the loose soil of the field in front of the door, and soon produced red and large fruits. The local people were curious about what tomatoes were, and Lin Huiyin gave them seedlings free of charge, inadvertently bringing the villagers closer to the female gentleman. In their spare time, everyone loves to swing the dragon gate array with Lin Huiyin, which girl is married to do the dowry, so they come to the door to ask her for advice, whose daughter-in-law has a baby, and can't forget to send her a few red eggs of the annunciation. The little days in the Moon Field brought Lin Huiyin a lot of joy, and she seemed to be back in Beiping, back to the living room full of laughter, joy and friendship.
The modern poems created by Lin Huiyin are the favorite of many literary and artistic young people, and "You Are the April Day on Earth" is a household name. In fact, she also had a fresh masterpiece during her stay in Lizhuang, called "The Little Village in November"—"Wherever I sit, I walk away, I have the same heartbeat; although my heart is troubled, it is always like many clouds, but there is a lonely bay of paddy fields, these deserted graves, they can never tell who is the master of all this." I folded a pillar to look at the longest shadow of the afternoon, waiting for the November answer to blow in the breeze. (excerpt)
"Stewed" parka pen and "braised" gold watch
After settling down, colleagues from the China Construction Society engaged in intense and busy investigation and research work. In this isolated village, there were no printing tools, and they could only use handwriting and the most primitive lithographs. At the end of 1942, the American friend Fairbank went to Lizhuang to visit Liang Sicheng and his wife, according to recollections, Liang Sicheng weighed to 47 kilograms at that time, worked until midnight every day, and wrote 110,000 words of "History of Chinese Architecture", he had overdrawn, but he was as ambitious as ever, in any case like a nobleman to maintain nobility and Sven, Lin Huiyin because of the humid weather in the south caused by the recurrence of lung disease, increasingly emaciated.
In order to improve his diet, Liang Sicheng sometimes had to put down the pen in his hand and learn to steam steamed steamed buns, pickled vegetables, and even made jam with orange peel. Liang Sicheng went to Yibin City to sell clothes, and when the clothes were finished, he also sent the Parker gold pen and watch that had accompanied him for decades, and in exchange for only two grass carp. He carried the fish home and said humorously to his wife, "If you don't stew this Parker pen, this gold watch will be braised." ”
Knowing the plight of Liang Lin and his wife in Lizhuang, friends repeatedly advised them to go to the United States for treatment and work, but they wrote in their reply, "Our motherland is in disaster. We cannot leave her, if we must die under a bayonet or a bomb, we must die on the soil of our homeland. His son, Liang Congjie, also remembered this vividly, when he asked his mother, "If the Japanese hit Sichuan, what will you do?" Lin Huiyin's response was calm and detached, "Don't Chinese readers still have an old way?" Isn't it the Yangtze River at our doorstep?"
Hand-drawn to cure obsessive-compulsive disorder
In the Li Zhuang period, when computer drawing was not yet born, Liang Sicheng used a duck tongue pen and ink line to draw architectural drawings that reached the world's advanced level at that time, the composition was precise and the details were exquisite, and to this day it is still a copy model for architecture students, and what is more admirable is that he added Chinese and English bilingual commentary to the drawing, and the pictures and texts are rich and clear at a glance. These yellowed pieces of paper eventually converged into the famous "History of Pictorial Chinese Architecture", which truly put the traditional Chinese craftsmanship into the international vision and won back face for China at the World Academic Forum.
It can be said that Liang Sicheng's hand-painting is not only a pleasing art, but also an illustrated secret to the ancients' "creation of The French style", in the end he completed his father's instructions, and also truly deciphered the "Heavenly Book" that had once saddened himself.
Head of department concerned with the conservation of cultural relics
In March 1945, when the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was approaching, Liang Sicheng, full of hope for peace and construction, wrote to Mei Yiqi, president of Tsinghua University, proposing to set up an architecture department at Tsinghua University after the war. In 1946, Zhu Qizhao, president of the China Construction Society, signed an agreement with Mei Yiqi, president of Tsinghua University, and the China Construction Society was officially included in the co-management of the Department of Construction of Tsinghua University, with Liang Sicheng as the head of the department.
Based on years of experience in surveying and mapping, Liang Sicheng believes that "the protection of ancient Chinese buildings is also urgent and unhurried in nature as the rescue of treasures and famous paintings in the fire." As early as the Period of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Civil War, he listed the cultural heritage protection list for the combatants, the "Catalogue of Cultural Relics of the Theater Cultural Relics Preservation Committee" and the "Compendium of Important Architectural Relics in the Country", and recommended that the US military protect the famous historical and cultural cities of Japan in the war, Kyoto and Nara.
In 1950, Liang Sicheng served as the deputy director of the Beijing Urban Planning Commission, and wrote a number of programs, such as "Beiping Cultural Relics Must Be Sorted out and Preserved", "Discussion on the Problem of the Existence and Destruction of Beijing City Walls", and "Beijing - The Incomparable Masterpiece of Urban Planning". He once suggested that the city wall should be transformed into the world's most unique three-dimensional park around the city, the city wall should be greened for people to visit and rest, and the magnificent city gate should be transformed into a cultural center, library, museum, to achieve the moat in summer boating, winter ice skating. The vision of a generation of architectural masters is so advanced.
The last work for the wife
"I didn't even know what architecture was, but Huin told me it was a science that included art and engineering." When Liang Sicheng first visited Lin Huiyin, Lin Huiyin told him that he would study architecture in the future. At that time, they may not have expected that in the future, the two people would support each other and leave many valuable assets for the history of Chinese architecture.
In April 1955, Lin Hui died of death, and Liang Sicheng designed a tombstone for her on her hospital bed, and the stele carved from Han White Jade was taken from a sample of the relief pattern designed by Lin Hui because of the Monument to the People's Heroes. The tombstone does not repeat the life of his wife, only the sincere and simple "architect Lin Huiyin" six words.
Between wind and rain
Above the wilderness
Settle down
Don't waste research
From an occasional "book of heaven"
To live up to the ingenuity of a generation of architectural masters
The surprise of China's Lizhuang seems to be always on the way
Leave it to you and mine
In addition to the bright moon and the river wind
There are also stories of time and aging
Note: Some of the information pictures in this article are from the exhibition hall of China Construction Society