The Guardian of China’s Architectural History

January 16, 2025 06:00

Liang Sicheng ( 梁思成) was the Father of Architecture in China. During the 1930s and 1940s, he and his wife travelled to more than 200 counties in the interior and found 2,738 ancient buildings. They made detailed drawings of 1,900 of them.

The two discovered the richness and diversity of China’s architectural heritage and, through their books and drawings, made them available to the world, both Chinese and non-Chinese.
A passionate lover of these treasures, he pleaded with the new Communist government in the 1950s to preserve the historic city of Beijing. He designed a new administrative centre in the west of the city.

But his demand was rejected by Chairman Mao who wanted to live next to China’s emperors. He took the advice of Soviet advisers who told him to follow the example of Moscow after the Bolshevik Revolution. As a result, the ancient walls of Beijing were demolished. Liang and his wife were devastated.

Liang is the subject of my biography “The Guardian of China’s Architectural History”. It has just been published in English by Joint Publishing of Hong Kong.

He was born on April 20, 1901, in Tokyo, the second son of Liang Qichao (梁啓超), who was in exile there. His father was one of China’s most influential intellectuals of the late Qing and early Republican periods.

He was educated in Kobe and Beijing, before earning a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, the leading American college in this discipline. A fellow student was Liu Hui-yin (林徽因), whom he married in 1928.

That same year, he and Lin established the first School of Architecture with a western curriculum, at Northeast University in Shenyang. He and a colleague won an award to draw up a plan for the city of Tianjin.

After the Japanese occupied Manchuria, Liang moved to Beijing and joined a new organization, the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture ( 中國營造學社). For the next 15 years, he and his wife travelled all over the country to discover its remarkable architectural heritage. They meticulously documented their findings, with drawings, articles and books, in Chinese and English. The world discovered the wealth of China’s architecture.

During the anti-Japanese war, Liang and his family were forced to flee to Kunming and Lizhuang, Sichuan. He was not called up to fight. Conditions of life worsened every year, as did the health of Lin, who was suffering from tuberculosis.

In 1946, Liang went to Yale University as a visiting fellow and served as China’s representative on the design of the new United Nations headquarters in New York. Then he returned to Beijing to establish the Architecture Faculty at Tsinghua University.

In 1949, he chose to stay in China and not move abroad. To save the ancient city of Beijing, he and a colleague drew up a 25,000-character plan for a new administrative centre 10 kilometres west of the Forbidden City; it would house all the government departments, as well as Party and military units. “If the old city were replaced by demolishing old structures and building new ones, the entire Beijing would be dead,” he said.

But Chairman Mao rejected the plan. He wanted to live close to the Emperors and follow the advice of Soviet experts who said Beijing should follow the example of Moscow – create an industrial city and demolish the old quarters – Josef Stalin said that preserving them was a “petit bourgeois fantasy”.

The new government gave Liang important assignments, such as designing the Monument of the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square and creating a Chinese style of architecture.

But criticism of him and his wife began in 1955. In April, she died of tuberculosis in a Beijing hospital. In 1956, he had to write a self-criticism. From 1960 to 1966, he was able to return to normal teaching at Tsinghua. He joined official delegations on foreign visits to many countries.
In 1966, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution and Liang’s final Calvary began. Red Guards took over the campus and subjected Liang to humiliation and criticism sessions. Terrified, he burnt almost all his papers and articles for fear the Red Guards would find them. He wept.

It took the personal intervention of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai to allow him to go to hospital for treatment. Even there he had to write a self-criticism.

This humiliating treatment damaged his already fragile health. He died in a Beijing hospital on January 9, 1972. His lifelong friends did not even dare to visit him.

After the death of Mao and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Liang was fully rehabilitated and his works published, in Chinese and English. In November 1992, China Post issued 54 million stamps commemorating him.

A Hong Kong-based writer, teacher and speaker.