Liang Sicheng, Lin Huiyin, Fei Weimei (taken in Beiping, 1933)
For a long time, for us Westerners, traditional Chinese architecture has always fascinated us because of its exotic taste. The wingspan roofs of the stupas and temples, the lattice lattices in the palace houses, the moon gates and arched bridges in the gardens all fascinated the European designers of the early 18th century, so much so that they created an art style that specifically imitated Chinese decoration, the so-called Chinoiserie. They imitated the patterns of Chinese architecture everywhere in the patterns of wallpaper, porcelain paintings, and furniture decorations, and they also built many things in the courtyards of Kuoren's houses, which were obviously imitations of Chinese styles. This upper-class fashion culminated in 1763 with the construction of a Chinese tower in the Kew Gardens, the culmination of its rise in England, and it continues to do so.
In China, craftsmen have developed these architectural features over thousands of years to suit people's daily needs, from shelter from the wind and rain to serving the gods or asserting imperial authority. Strangely, architecture has always been despised as a work of craftsmanship and has not attracted the interest of the intellectual community to do academic research on it. It was not until the 20th century that the Chinese began to engage in the study of the architectural history of their country, and its pioneer was Liang Sicheng.
In 1935, Liang Sicheng took a photo when he surveyed and mapped Longxing Temple in Zhengding, Hebei
Liang Sicheng's (1901-1972) education made him the most suitable person to lead the first generation of architectural historians in China. He was the eldest son of the famous scholar and reformer Liang Qichao. He loved and was deeply influenced by his father, and he took to heart his teachings about China's great traditions and its future. He is not tall in stature, but he has a talent for observation, exploration, meticulousness and aesthetic acuity, and loves painting and rhythm. Liang Sicheng was born in Tokyo when his father was forced into exile in Japan and grew up in Beijing. Here he received an early education in two areas, which later proved to be extremely important for his future achievements.
First of all, it was the traditional education under his father's tutelage, that is, the cultivation of ancient Chinese literature, which was indispensable for him to study ancient texts and identify inscriptions, and secondly, the solid knowledge of English, Western natural sciences and humanities that he learned at Tsinghua School, which was designed for students preparing to study abroad. He and his classmates belong to an outstanding generation of Chinese intellectuals, with a profound cultivation of two languages and two cultures, and have made outstanding achievements in communicating Chinese and Western cultures.
Liang Sicheng's lifelong career in architecture also has its own accidental reasons. This choice was suggested to him by a girl with whom he was later married. The girl's name was Lin Huiyin, the daughter of Lin Changmin, a scholar, diplomat and poet. In 1920, Lin Changmin was sent to England, and at the age of 16, Lin Huiyin was taken with her, she was very intelligent, agile and beautiful, and she already showed an irresistible attraction to people, which later became the characteristic of her life. She inherited her father's poetic talents, but was equally interested in other arts, especially theater and painting. She was admitted to a British girls' secondary school and quickly increased her knowledge of English, reaching a very fluent level in conversation and writing. From a British classmate who used to design houses as a game, she learned about the profession of architect. This kind of work, which combines everyday artistic creation with immediate practical value, fascinated her and decided that this was exactly what she wanted to do. After returning to China, she quickly made Liang Sicheng make the same determination.
They decided to study Xi at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. The head of this department was the famous Paul Krette, an architect from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Liang Sicheng's enrollment was postponed until the fall of 1924 after he fractured his left leg in a motorcycle accident in Beijing in May 1923. The injured leg never fully recovered, resulting in a slight limp in the left leg. When he was young, Liang Sicheng was strong and active, and this disability did not damage him much, but later it affected his spine and often caused him unbearable pain.
Penn's curriculum continues the tradition of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and aims to produce practicing architects, but is equally suited to training architectural historians. It requires students to delve into classical architectural columns in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as famous buildings from the European Middle Ages and Renaissance. The department often conducts homework competitions to test students' abilities on the topic of drawing a restoration map of an ancient site or making a design plan for an unfinished cathedral. An essential requirement for students is to draw neat, aesthetically pleasing architectural renderings, including writing. Liang Sicheng has made outstanding achievements in this regard. When he returned home, he held the same high standards for his young assistants and students.
When Liang Sicheng was a sophomore at Penn, a book sent by his father from Beijing would determine the path of his life. This is a guide to Song Dynasty architecture compiled in 1103 by a talented official of the Song Dynasty, the "Construction of the French Style", which uses obscure Song architectural terminology. The book has been lost for hundreds of years, and it was not until recently that a copy of it was discovered and reprinted. Liang Sicheng immediately began to study it, but, as he later admitted, he did not read it for the most part. Before that, he had rarely thought about the history of Chinese architecture, but from then on, he was determined to understand this difficult and important work.
Lin Huiyin also came to Penn in the fall of 1924, only to find that the Department of Architecture did not accept female students. She had no choice but to enroll in the school's Academy of Fine Arts and try to take courses in the Department of Architecture. In fact, in 1926 she was hired as a "part-time assistant teacher in the architectural design class" and the following year she was promoted to "part-time lecturer". In June 1927, at the same graduation ceremony, she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with honors, while Liang Sicheng received a Master of Architecture degree with similar honors.
On February 12, 1927, at the graduation ceremony of Pennsylvania University, the article gave special instructions to Liang Sicheng, Lin Huiyin, and Chen Zhi. Recently, the official website of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design announced that Lin Huiyin will be posthumously awarded a degree in architecture, and the posthumous ceremony will be held at the graduation ceremony of students in 2024, which is also the 100th anniversary of Lin Huiyin's admission.
After a summer working together in an architectural firm in Clayter, Philadelphia, the two of them split up and went to different schools. Interested in theatre, Lin studied stage design in the renowned studio of George Baker at Yale University, Xi Liang Sicheng transferred to Harvard University to study the writings of Western scholars on Chinese art and architecture.
It was during this period, when Liang Sicheng was in his twenties, that the first serious works devoted to Chinese architecture appeared in the West. In 1923 and 1925, the German Ernst Berchmann published two volumes of photographs of various types of Chinese architecture. In 1924 and 1926, a Swiss art historian published two papers on Beijing's city walls, gates, and palace architecture. Many years later, as an after-the-fact comment, Liang Sicheng pointed out: "None of them understand the 'grammar' of Chinese architecture; Of the two, Xilongren is the better. Despite his carelessness, he made use of his newfound book, Constructing the French Style. ”
Song "Building the French Style" large wooden system pattern is omitted
Because Liang's father insisted that they marry after completing their studies, the wedding of Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin did not take place in Ottawa until March 1928, when Liang Sicheng's brother-in-law was the local Chinese consul general. On their way back to China, they made a detour to Europe, and browsed all the buildings they had learned in their cars, including Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. This was their first time on a field trip to the building together, and they did it many times in the years that followed. In the midsummer of the same year, they suddenly learned that Liang Sicheng had found a job in China and asked him to come to work immediately. It was only at this time that they learned that Liang Sicheng's father was seriously ill, and soon after, Liang's father died prematurely in January 1929.
In September 1928, Liang Sicheng was hired to establish and preside over the Department of Architecture of Northeastern University in Shenyang. With the help of his wife and two other Penn-graduate Chinese architects, he established a Kretter-esque curriculum and an architectural firm. China's northeast region is a vast land that has yet to be developed and is rich in resources. Had it not been for the threat of Japanese militarism, the design and construction of buildings here would have been promising. The young architects soon became busy with their teaching work, urban planning, architectural design and construction supervision. However, in September 1931, only three years after Liang Sicheng arrived at the school, the Japanese seized the three northeastern provinces through a surprise attack. This was the first stage of Japan's aggression against China. This aggression continued for a further 14 years, and from 1937 onwards it erupted into an armed conflict.
This eventful season marked a decisive turning point in Liang Sicheng's career. In June of that year, he accepted a new position, which led him to devote his most energetic years to the study of the history of Chinese architecture. In 1929, a wealthy retired official, Zhu Qichao, discovered the book "Construction of the French Style" and established a society in Beijing called the Construction Society (later renamed the China Construction Society). Under his push, the book was restored and reprinted, which caused a great deal of repercussions in the academic community. In order to solve the mystery of the book, he had recruited a small group of old scholars to study it, but neither these people nor himself knew anything about architecture. Therefore, Zhu Qichao spent several months mobilizing Liang Sicheng to participate in this society and lead its research activities.
The Society's office is located in a row of rooms on the west side of Tiananmen Square. In the autumn of 1931, Liang Sicheng resumed his earlier research on this Song Dynasty architectural manual. The work seemed promising, but he was still puzzled by most of the technical terms. However, his past practical training and practical experience convinced him that in order to figure them out, "the only reliable source of knowledge is the building itself, and the only teachers available are the craftsmen". He came up with the idea of studying under the tutelage of a few old carpenters who had been working in the palace all their lives, and began his research by examining the structure of the palace buildings around him. Most of the palaces were built during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912).
In 1734 A.D. [the twelfth year of the Yongzheng reign of the Qing Dynasty], a manual of Qing Dynasty building regulations was promulgated, the "Code of Engineering Practice", which was also full of obscure terms. But the old craftsmen knew how to dictate those traditional terms. Under their guidance, Liang learned how to identify timber and components, how to understand complex construction methods, and how to interpret the rules and regulations. After this first-hand research, he wrote his first book, "Qing Style Construction Rules". It is a book that discusses and explains the architectural practices of the Qing dynasty (although in his opinion it cannot be compared with the Song Dynasty book "Constructing the French Style" published in 1103 AD).
The Ministry of Qing Industry's "Code of Engineering Practices" large-style large wooden drawings should be omitted
It was through this approach that Liang Sicheng initially unveiled the mystery of what he called "the grammar of Chinese architecture". But he still couldn't read the book and the 11th-century architectural materials in it, which was a challenge for him. However, based on experience, he is convinced that the key lies in finding and examining the architectural relics of that era. Extensive field surveys are on the agenda.
The Liangs' honeymoon trip to Europe was also a kind of field trip, to see for themselves the famous buildings they had learned about at Penn. The experience of studying Qing Dynasty architecture with craftsmen in Beijing was also a similar field trip to obtain first-hand information, but it was nothing more than not traveling. Obviously, the only way to understand the grammar and evolution of Chinese architecture is to collect a number of early architectural relics that can be dated and kept as original as possible.
Leung's emphasis on fieldwork has been recognized by the Society. In 1931, he was appointed head of the French Department. The following year, another new member, Liu Dunzhen, was appointed director of the documentation department. The latter is slightly older than Liang Sicheng, who studied architecture Xi Japan and is a very talented scholar. Over the next decade, the two of them worked together to lead a group of younger colleagues. Of course, both of them are engaged in both fieldwork and documentary research, because the two are inherently inseparable.
Where can we find the surviving pre-Qing Dynasty buildings? Relatively speaking, they are few and far between. Many have long since been destroyed by fire, while others have been deliberately sabotaged by religious or political enemies. In this way, the investigation must go deep into the small towns in the countryside and the barren mountains and wild temples. Before making such an expedition, the Leung couple always had to choose their route on a map based on the local gazetteer. This kind of local history always records the temples, pagodas, and places of interest that the area is proud of. However, its age is not necessarily reliable, and some architectural remains seem to be quite valuable to read, but after a long journey to the site, they find that they have long been unrecognizable and even disappeared. Nonetheless, relying on the guidance of these local chronicles, it is possible to carry out surveys over a wide area and even throughout the province without missing important monuments. Of course, there are also discoveries based on legends, oral guides, and even the faint ancient buildings that have been praised in folk songs throughout history. In the thirties of the 20th century, the history of Chinese architecture was still an unknown territory, and some unprecedented discoveries often surprised people.
In 1933, Lin Huiyin inspected Kaiyuan Temple in Zhengding, Hebei
In those days, there were serious difficulties in going out to investigate. Journeys that begin by train are often followed by bumpy and crowded coaches and end with two-wheeled hardboard mule carts. Bring your valuable equipment – cameras, tripods, tape measures, all kinds of stools and a notebook – all your precious stuff. You can only stay in ancient temples or roadside shops, where there are piles of lice and the latrine is crawling with maggots. There are often delicious snacks in the teahouse on the edge of the village, but the hygiene of the bowl of chopsticks and raw and cold food is very suspicious. In some parts of northern China, it is also necessary to beware of surprise attacks by bandits on unprepared travelers.
As long as Lin Huiyin could arrange the two young children, the Liang couple always accompanied them, often accompanied by Mo Zongjiang, a young colleague trained by Liang Sicheng, and a servant who carried luggage and errands. The kind of local telephone they go to is very rare, and the local yamen may have one in order to communicate with their superiors elsewhere, and there are no other lines in the small town. As a result, it often takes a lot of time to contact and negotiate with local officials, Buddhist monks, and others before a major discovery can be examined in detail.
When all these obstacles have finally been overcome, the small team can get to work. They pulled out the tape measure and measured the size of the building and the surrounding settings. These figures and sketches drawn in a notebook are indispensable for later drawing plans, elevations, and sections, and occasionally using them to make the main model. At the same time, in addition to taking panoramic photos, Liang Sicheng also had to carry his Leica camera on the beam frame to shoot those important details. In order to measure and take pictures, temporary scaffolding is often erected, which alarms countless bats and kicks up thousands of years of dust. There are often stone tablets standing in the courtyard or under the corridor of the temple, which record the process and age of the construction or rebuilding of the temple, most of which were painstakingly copied by Lin Huiyin. All these valuable materials were written down in notebooks so that they could be brought back to Beijing for collation and publication.
In 1932, Liang Sicheng's first field expedition led to one of his greatest discoveries, the Guanyin Pavilion of Dule Temple, 60 miles [about 100 kilometers] east of Beijing, which contained a 55-foot [16-meter] tall statue. The wooden structure, built in 984 AD, and the statues in it have survived for nearly a thousand years.
Hebei Jixian Dule Temple Guanyin Pavilion
In 1941, Liang Sicheng briefly described their arduous expeditions in the 30s in an unpublished manuscript:
For the past nine years, twice a year, the China Construction Society, where I work, has sent a field investigation team led by a researcher to search for ancient structures in various places, ranging from two to three months at a time. Its ultimate goal is to write a history of Chinese architecture. This topic has never been reached by scholars, and there is very little literature available for reference, so we can only rely on examples.
So far, we have visited more than 200 counties in 15 provinces and inspected more than 2,000 buildings. As head of the French Department, I have personally visited most of them. At present, although we are still far from our goal, the information obtained is of great significance.
For Liang and Lin, a climax of this expedition was the discovery of Foguang Temple in June 1937. This beautiful building, built in 857 A.D., is located in the deep mountains of northern Shanxi Province, intact for more than 1,000 years, and was identified as the earliest wooden building seen in China at that time after Liang's investigation, and is the first original example of the Tang Dynasty to be discovered. His brief account of the building in this book expresses his special affection for this "first-class national treasure".
On the front porch of the main hall of Foguang Temple, Liang Sicheng stands next to the tripod in the foreground
In the 30s of the 20th century, a commendable feature of the work of the China Construction Society was that the discovery of the ancient building investigation was quickly and seriously published in the Transactions of the China Construction Society (quarterly). These articles, written in Chinese, give detailed descriptions of these buildings, accompanied by numerous plates and photographs. There is also an English catalogue in the Transactions Journal, but unfortunately the seven volumes produced at that time are now rare editions.
This book was written by Liang Sicheng at the end of World War II in the remote village of Lizhuang, Sichuan Province. In the summer of 1937, on the eve of the fall of Beijing, the Liang family and some members of the society evacuated Beijing. After a long journey, he took refuge in the mountainous southwestern provinces of the time, which were under the control of the Chinese government. At this time, it was already very difficult to fund the Society's research. However, they still did some research on the ancient buildings of Sichuan and Yunnan under extremely difficult conditions. However, during the eight-year war of resistance, the blockade and hyperinflation left them destitute and sick. Liu Dunzhen left the society to teach at the Central University in Chongqing, and the young people also went their separate ways. But Liang Sicheng and his family remained in Lizhuang, followed only by his faithful assistant Mo Zongjiang and a few others. Lin Hui was bedridden with tuberculosis. It was under these circumstances that in 1944, with the consistent help of his wife, Liang Sicheng completed the only book in English, with the aim of introducing the research results of the China Construction Institute in the past 15 years to the outside world.
After the end of World War II, Liang Sicheng, freed from isolation and suffering, was warmly invited by Princeton and Yale universities in 1946 to lecture on Chinese architecture in the United States. His Chinese writings were already known to the West, and by this time he had become an internationally renowned scholar. He settled his family in Beijing and went to the United States in the spring of 1946 as a visiting professor at Yale University. It was his second and last visit to the United States in his life.
So far, my account has not touched on personal relationships, which is to illustrate that Liang Sicheng and Lin Hui avoid interference because of their important role as leaders of the discipline. However, much of what I have written above is first-hand knowledge that I have learned as a close friend of Leung, and our friendship is closely related to my narrative. In the summer of 1932, my husband [Fairbank] and I were living in Beijing as a couple of newly married students, and we were introduced to the Liang couple by a friend. They are a little older, but they are not far from the time to study in the United States. Maybe because of this, they hit each other off at first sight. We were both neighbors and friends, all of whom were interested in Chinese art and history.
For whatever reason, during the four years that my husband and I lived in Beijing, we became close friends. When we first met, Liang had just completed his first fieldwork. Two years later, when we were renting an old mill in Shanxi (Yudaohe, Fenyang County) during the summer vacation, Liang visited us and invited us to be our companions to do a long-distance field survey in some unexplored areas. It was an experience I will never forget. Together, we experienced the primitive conditions of travel, the excitement or disappointment of a hopeful visit to certain buildings, as recorded in the local annals, and the interesting surveying work. When we returned to the United States, we continued to exchange letters with the couple. During the Second World War, we returned to China as government officials, and our friendship with them deepened. At that time, we and they were living in the interior of southwest China, and the Japanese army occupied Beijing and the coastal provinces.
We visited Liang Sicheng's family in Lizhuang and saw with our own eyes the kind of poor and sick life brought about by the war. In this situation, Liang Sicheng, who is also a nurse, a chef, and the director of a research institute, is writing a detailed history of Chinese architecture, as well as this concise "History of Chinese Architecture in Images". For the sake of these writings, he and his assistants were working on the plans, elevations, and sections of about seventy of the most important buildings they had studied, based on photographs and measured records. The plates reproduced in this book are undoubtedly a very important contribution to our understanding of the history of Chinese architecture.
Plan and cross-sectional view of Guanyin Pavilion of Dule Temple in Jixian County, Hebei Province
When Liang Sicheng and others moved to the southwest for refuge, they deposited the negatives taken with a Leica camera during the field investigation in a bank in Tianjin for safety. But after the end of the eight-year Anti-Japanese War, he found that these countless negatives had all been destroyed in the Tianjin flood [in 1939]. Now, all that remains are the photographs he once took with him.
When Liang Sicheng came to Yale University in 1947, he brought these photographs, along with those wonderful drawings and manuscripts for the book, hoping to publish them in the United States. At the time, he was teaching at Yale, lecturing at Princeton University, where he received an honorary degree, and he was a busy consultant on the design of the United Nations Headquarters building with a small group of internationally renowned architects. He used the gap in his work to revise his manuscript with me. In June 1947, he suddenly learned that Lin Hui needed a major operation, so he immediately left for Beijing. Before leaving, he handed me the drawings and photographs, but took the only manuscript with him so that he could "revise it on the long journey back home" and sent it to me. But since then, there has been no news.
The deterioration of his wife's condition made Liang Sicheng worried and had no intention of caring about anything else. Soon, the family's worries were drowned in the revolution and the earth-shaking changes that had taken place in the lives of the Chinese. In 1950, the nascent People's Republic of China asked Liang Sicheng to advise and participate in leadership in national reconstruction, urban planning, and other architectural matters. Even Lin Huiyin, who was seriously ill, was invited by the government to participate in the design work until her untimely death in 1955 [1954].
Stills from the documentary "Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin".
Perhaps it was her death that made Liang Sicheng rethink his long-shelved plan. He asked me to return the drawings and photos to him. I sent the parcel to a student in the UK to be forwarded to him at the address he had given. In April 1957, the student wrote that the parcel had been received. But it wasn't until the autumn of 1978 that I discovered that these materials had never returned to Liang Sicheng. He died in 1972 after many years of teaching at Tsinghua University, but he did not have the opportunity to publish the results of this study, with illustrations and photographs.
The book now is a happy ending to the story. In 1980, the parcel with the picture was miraculously recovered. A British friend in London traced the student's whereabouts for me and got his address in Singapore. The parcel remained untouched on the man's bookshelf. After some negotiations, the parcel was sent back to Beijing, where it was reunited with Liang Sicheng's manuscript, which was kept by the Department of Architecture at Tsinghua University. Although the publication of The Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture was delayed for more than three decades, it still gave Western scholars, students, and readers the opportunity to learn about the discoveries and insights of this outstanding Chinese pioneer in this field.
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
*The article is excerpted from "The History of Chinese Architecture in Images" (written by Liang Sicheng, translated by Liang Congjie, Joint Publishing Co., Ltd., 2023-11)