Liang and Lin: Partners in Exploring China's Architectural Past

by Wilma Fairbank

Wilma Fairbank documents, from both a historical and a uniquely personal perspective, the professional and personal achievements of Lin Whei-yin and Liang Sicheng. Liang and Lin were born in early twentieth-century China, a time when the influences of modernism were slowly bearing down on the traditional culture. In the 1920s, they traveled together to the Beaux Arts universe of Philadelphia, where they both graduated with honors from the architecture department of the University of Pennsylvania. Married in 1928, they returned to their native land and became the first two professors at the newly founded school of architecture in Shenyang's Tung Pei University. Wilma Fairbank and her husband, John King Fairbank, Harvard University's eminent historian of modern China, were lifelong friends of Liang and Lin. This relationship allows the author, herself a noted researcher of art and architecture, to paint a vivid picture of the couple within the context of China's turbulent past. Fairbank recounts how Liang and Lin used their Western training to initiate the study of China's architectural evolution. She also documents—as seen through the eyes of Liang and Lin—the tragic events that ravaged the Chinese homeland and its the 1937 invasion and bombings by the Japanese military and the ensuing illness and poverty; World War II and the civil war; the rise to power of the Communist government in 1949; and the victimization of the scholar class during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. Fairbank provides a highly readable, emotionally charged personal account of the couple's lives, and the numerous and sometimes horrific torments and humiliations they suffered. And, finally, when it was all too late, the posthumous praise and recognition.

Genres: Architecture, Biography, China, History

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1994

Reviews

[Annie Yang-Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly moving and unbearably sorrowful. It is a crime how these two amazing lives glowing with talent and wisdom had to be truncated by human stupidity one form after another. This book also serves as loyal proof of unshakable friendship between the Liangs and the Fairbanks. My only minor complaint is the spelling of names for people and places; the non-Pinyin spelling system in the book makes it difficult to figure out the people or the places in question, and also the same place is sometimes referred to with different names at various parts of the book, adding to the confusion.

[Luke Eure · Rating 3 out of 5]

Life was so hard then and there! The frequency with which Lin and Liang face debilitating sickness that puts them out of commission for 6+ months, horrendous travel during wartime that puts them off the grid for 6+ months, or bombings that put them away from home for years, it's amazing that they were able to do so much in academic architecture. Made me newly appreciative of medicine and peace.

I didn't really know anything about either of them before reading the book and I still can't totally understand how academic architects could be so famous.

Other interesting things:
- when internally displaced eastern Chinese moved to Yunnan during WW2, they were seen by the locals as invaders basically the same as the Japanese. From what I understand this kind of inter-Chinese animosity is not nearly as strong anymore in Yunnan.
- Liang Chichao talks about how must he abhorred and detested Xu Zhimo's decision to marry, but still officiated and gave a very stern and disapproving speech at the wedding. A very different way of showing disapproval than I would do
- at one point some aunts don't want the author and her husband to visit out of fear that a yet-inconceived baby intended for Liang and Lin might end up with the Americans instead
- Seemingly Lin was instrumental to a lot of the architectural work, but her role was not fore-fronted because nobody would really believe that a woman did that much
- I had never before reading this heard "the bamboo curtain" used to refer to Chinese isolationism under Mao
- very interestiing to hear the American author's views on China in the mid-1900s. Doesn't really seem condescending to me, but there's a kind of "I want the reader to understand that this culture is different" attitude in a way that I feel I don't see that much in modern writing. e.g., saying that while in school, Liang was "Chinese to his core" and loved his father but still became American. Talking about balancing the airs of the old and the new in Chinese culture. And in reference to a traditional woman: "her feet were bound and so was her mind"

[TK Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In View of Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's eminence, the leading figure at PUMC, Professor of Surgery Dr. J. Weng Liu (Liu Jiu-heng), had bee designated to perform the kidney operation. What happened was reported some time later in confidence by two PUMC interns who had been present at the operation. According to their report, 'After the patient was wheeled into the operating room, the attending nurse marked with iodine the wrong side of the abdomen. Dr. Liu went on with the operation [removing the healthy kidney] without checking carefully the x-ray film that was hanging beside the operating table. This tragic mistake was discovered immediately after the operation, but it was kept TOP SECRET for the reputation of PUMC was at stake.'"

"At the beginning of Liberation, standing on the T'ien An Gate, the mayor of Peking told me that Chairman Mao had said in the future from here we'd be able to see smokestacks everywhere. I was dumbstruck. Wasn't this exactly what we wanted to avoid? What would a city that had 'smokestacks everywhere' be like? This picture was really terrifying. So I honestly opened my heart and told them all my ideas.... When I brought up these ideas I never meant to oppose anybody. I also deeply believed Chairman Mao's words, 'because we are serving the people, we will follow good opinions no matter from whom they come.' At that time I didn't realise that 'every word of Chairman Mao's is the absolute truth,' but even today I still don't get his statement about 'smokestacks everywhere.'"