Architecture article

Architecture article

Liang Sicheng

To further illuminate the pathways of what is probably the most important architectural figure in the history of modern China, I have tried to bring forth a somewhat detailed summary biography of Liang Sicheng. Wilma Fairbank has thankfully already provided us with an exhaustive biography of both Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin, which has been the core of the following chapter, broken down to just a few pages.

Early Years

Liang Sicheng was born on April 20th 1901 in Tokyo, Japan, to Liang Qichao (1873 – 1929) and his wife Li Huixian (1869 – 1924). Liang Qichao, a prominent scholar of the reformed Confucian tradition, "had leapt into fame as a leader of the reform movement of 1898," but had to leave China for Japan that same year following a conservative coup d'etat led by Empress Dowager Cixi (1835 – 1908) and the later Chinese "President-Emperor" Yuan Shikai (1859 – 1916). In Japan, he co-founded the Baohuang Hui (the Society for the Protection of the Emperor) with his mentor and teacher Kang Youwei. The family of Liang Sicheng eventually stayed in Japan for 14 years, where he thusly lived for most of his childhood, until they returned to China in 1912, enabled by the new permissive political climate that accompanied the anti-monarchist, republican Xinhai Revolution, first settling in Tianjin. Liang Sicheng is considered the favorite son of his father. According to an article of his, his memories of the time in Japan are fond, generally defined by familial peace, care by Japanese servants, attending a Chinese school and playing with his siblings. After returning to China, the Liang family lived in their Tianjin-based Western-style two-story mansion, located in the Italian concession. Following the appointment of his father as Minister of Justice of the recently founded Chinese Republic in September 1913, the family prepared for a necessary move to Beijing. There, Liang Sicheng and his brother attended an esteemed Anglican school in the years 1913 to 1915, whereafter Liang attended the Tsinghua College (which would later become today's Tsinghua University) for 8 years, until 1923. At college, he excelled in "scholarship and artistry" and autodidactically picked up sketching skills, which would later prove to be quite important.

Liang Qichao attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1918, spending the following year there as well, returning to China thereafter. By his arrival, he had noticed the strong focus on the "fruits of Western civilization" that Tsinghua College was teaching his sons. This resulted in the elder Liang's decision to hold lectures for three years – 1921 to 1923 – in what is essentially Chinese Studies for his sons, their cousins and a small select amount of others at his home in Tianjin. These lectures strongly impacted Liang Sicheng and can certainly be considered indicative of what "road of scholarship" he was going to take later on. In Liang Sicheng's final year at Tsinghua College, he eventually decided on enrolling at the University of Pennsylvania to study architecture. In 1923, Liang Sicheng suffered a thigh fracture during a car crash in Beijing that would render one of his legs noticably shorter, resulting in a limp, and requiring a back brace for the rest of his life – a handicap considered remarkable, given the nature of his later occupation that necessitated climbing on roofs and walking long distances in the countryside.

Studies

In 1924, Liang Sicheng left China for the United States, to actually enroll at the University of Pennsylvania in fall, after a brief stay at Cornell University during the summer. He did so together with his future wife, Lin "Phyllis" Huiyin and his roommate from Tsinghua College Chen "Benjamin" Zhi. In September 1924, Liang's mother died of cancer. Liang Sicheng was considered "very formal and dour," "serious and concentrated," a strong contrast to the lively, "vivacious and quick-witted" Lin Huiyin or the "most Westernized of the bunch" Chen Zhi. Fairbank further notes that "[d]uring his student years, Sicheng's abilities were recognized by the award of two medals and other honors for his designs," yielding respect from his father. Liang finished his studies together with Lin in 1927, him graduating as Master of Architecture, her with an Honors Bachelor of the Fine Arts, allowing them to finalize their engagement. He left Pennsylvania for Harvard in September 1927, where he was invited to "research Oriental architecture." During his stay in the United States, Liang Sicheng received various reprints of historical documents with architectural content from his father, which he studied meticulously. In February 1928, Liang finished his "preparatory" work in Harvard. In March 1928, Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin married in Ottawa, at the Chinese Consulate, which they left for Europe right after the wedding.

Liang and Lin toured Europe as part of a half-honeymoon, half-study trip for the rest of that year. Hurrying from place to place, trying to find a proper balance between enjoyment and conducting "field research", they eventually visited France, England, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Germany. At the end of the summer 1928, they arrived back in China, where Liang immediately re-united with his sick father and whereafter they relocated to Shenyang. Liang Qichao died on January 1929, apparently following a butched operation the aforegoing year.

Career

Liang Sicheng was invited to work at the Northeastern University in Shenyang, first as "Assistant Professor of the Department of Architecture," two years later, in 1930, as "Professor in Charge." At the time, the Department of Architecture consisted only of two people: Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng himself. Lin gave birth to her first child, a daughter, in 1929. In that same year, the architectural department was enlarged by three more scholars: Liang and Lin's friend from their time in the United States, Chen Zhi; Tong Jun, a Shenyang local; and Cai Fangying. All five were competent scholars of architecture, primarily that of a "Cret-style," as they were educated in the United States, and were teaching about both Western and Chinese architecture. Beyond their university work, they recognized the need for an active architectural practice in Shenyang, which led to the founding of a joint company of the name "Liang, Chen, Tong and Cai Architects and Engineers." This company received two commissions right after its founding, one for an entire campus for Jilin University in Changchun, one for a branch of the University of Communications at Jinzhou, both in Liaoning Province. Lin Huiyin took part in the activities of this company as well. During his time in Manchuria, Liang Sicheng showed his later characteristic opposition to blind destruction of valuable architectural sites in his attempt to save Shenyang's Drum and Bell towers, as they were considered hindrances to traffic by the local mayor. "As was to happen all too often in alter years, his advice was rejected."

In late 1930, Liang and Lin moved back to Beijing, where they would stay for the next seven years. There, Liang accepted a job offer from the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture to work as its director. In this role, Liang Sicheng properly devoted himself to finding the answer to a question he had learned while studying in the United States under Cret for the first time: How would the history of Chinese architecture be subdivided? Liang termed it the quest for the "grammar" of Chinese architecture. As part of his studies here, Liang recognized that the central material used in Chinese history was timber and that, for example, the impressive city walls of Beijing were merely exceptions to this rule.

Reading about the field trips of two Japanese archeologists, Liang Sicheng was prompted to study the countryside himself as well, an undertaking to be questioned, given the perishable nature of wood as the main building material of the buildings to be studied. He embarked on his first own field trip in April 1932, in order to study a structure, whose features he was reminded of in the works of the Japanese archeologists and which indicated to him the possibility of said tower being an extraordinarily old building. Arriving at the structure's location, Liang took to measuring. Two other buildings that they visited would not survive past today, only in Liang's drawings.

In 1932, Liang was joined by Liu Dongchen at the institute, who would become "Director of Documentary Studies," while Liang's title was changed to "Director of Technical Studies." Liang and Liu were set to venture into various cooperations together, the first of which was, however, to restore two-story library building. Various field trips followed in the years after.

In the early summer of 1937, Liang and Lin discovered a wood-frame structure that was dated back to the Tang dynasty, conretely to 857 AD, that was still intact, which is considered their "crowning achievement as historians of Chinese architecture." During the trip that led to this discovery and the aforegoing ones, Liang and Lin were often faced with wealthy or famous Buddhist temples that were fundamentally altered in the course of their history, which informed their decision to primarily be on the lookout for older sites, as those were expected to be much less prone to regular vain or functional modifications, which in turn meant that more of the original structure could be expected to be unaltered. Right after this discovery, the Marco Polo incident occurred, which led to the invasion of the Japanese Empire and the occupation of Beijing and other parts of China. For Liang and Lin, this necessitated a new plan regarding their return. After a detour, both managed to return to Beijing, organizing the entirety of their accoutrements and preparing to leave for their first refuge through Tianjin and Changsha: Kunming.