Introduction to Gulangyu Architecture - Lin Yutang and Liao House

In the ancient banyan, longan and magnolia woods behind the Gulangyu Concert Hall, there are two English-style houses, known as "Liao House", very old, and very simple, now compiled No. 44 and No. 48 Zhangzhou Road, of which Building 44 is the former residence and reading place of Lin Yutang, a famous literary artist in China, and the mother's home of his wife Liao Cuifeng.

Liao House is one of the oldest villas in Gulangyu Island, and the original overpass between the two floors has been demolished. The villa arch slope top, even the arch wide corridor, with a tide barrier layer, the façade treatment is very refined, the cornice line is straight, the wall columns are not decorated, only the arch coupons hold the square pillars, which are very strong in the forest. What is more special is that the main entrance arch is tall, the stone steps are slender and flat, and it leads to the hall, which is the early European-style building of Gulangyu Island, and now there are few well-preserved. After a hundred years of wind and rain, the liao house has changed times and has become very dilapidated. Building 44 was demolished on the second floor after the Cultural Revolution, and the wide corridor was blocked into a living room, and even in the tide-proof floor, it was inhabited.

The "Liren Zhai" on the right side of the Liao house is a two-storey villa residence, arch ticket corridor, shuttered doors and windows, also attached to the tide barrier layer, the cornice line is also very concise, the square pillar head is only stacked with lines, and the arch coupon support is simple and generous, elegant and beautiful, which is the usual method of early European architecture in Gulangyu Island, and there are not many existing ones. Laterite clay bottles are used under the strips of the wide gallery on the first floor, and glazed hollow lattice is used on the second floor, which was fashionable in those days. The plaque of "Li Ren Zhai" on the lintel of the main entrance is still the original of the Liao House, which is old but still intact.

Lin Yutang was born in 1895 in Longxi to a family of priests. At the age of 10, he went to Study at Yangyuan Primary School run by the American Reformed Church in Gulangyu Island, and later became a member of the Xunyuan Academy. In 1912, he was admitted to St. John's University in Shanghai, and after graduating in 1916, the school recommended him to teach English at Tsinghua University. In 1919, he went to Harvard University in the United States to study comparative literature. Before going abroad, he married Qianjin, the owner of Qianzhuang, and Liao Cuifeng, a high-achieving student at St. Mary's College in Shanghai, on the orders of his parents, and the wedding was held in the Concordia Chapel and the main hall of Building 44. At that time, the main hall was very luxurious, with hanging lights with many candles, the screens in the hall were all hollowed out flowers, and the surrounding furniture was full of sourwood furniture, where the family often held family worship. After marriage, Lin Yutang and his wife went to the United States for further study, and since then they have embarked on the road of literature. Today, the old man of the Liao family still remembers the scene when Lin Yutang walked down the stone steps to the dock.

After receiving his master's degree at Harvard, Lin Yutang immediately went to the University of Leipzig in Germany to pursue a doctorate. After returning to China in 1923, he went to Peking University to teach, and at the same time wrote articles for newspapers and periodicals such as "Language Silk". In 1926, he became the head of the Department of Literature and the general secretary of the National College of Xiamen University. During his time at Xiamen University, he saw that Lu Xun alone "often made a fire to cook and eat, opened a can and spent his days with ham boiled on the fire wine stove, and felt that he was too unwilling to go, and he lost the friendship of the landlord, and Lu Xun had no complaints about me (referring to Lin Yutang, the author pressed), and it was Lu Xun who knew me too." Therefore, he invited Lu Xun to his Gulangyu home for dinner, and sometimes took Lu Xun to Lin Qiaozhi's house after dinner to listen to her niece play the piano. After 1927, he wrote the English Reader and English Grammar for the Enlightened Bookstore, and edited the Analects, The World, Cosmic Wind and other publications. In 1932, together with Song Qingling and others, he initiated the organization "Chinese Civil Rights Protection League". In 1935, he published "My Country and My People". In 1938, he lived in Europe and wrote the trilogy of "Jinghua Smoke and Clouds", "Wind and Crane", and "Zhumen". He settled in Taiwan in 1966. The following year, he edited the Contemporary English-Chinese Dictionary in Hong Kong. He died in Hong Kong in March 1976 at the age of 81 and was buried in his homestead in Yangmingshan, Taipei.

Some newspapers published editorials saying that Lin Yutang, who stepped on the culture of the East and the West and devoted himself to commenting on cosmic articles, may be a writer and scholar who has been deeply influenced by Western culture in the past hundred years and has made the greatest contribution to the international promotion of traditional Chinese culture.