Writing a History of Chinese Architecture
This is an introduction to an argument about Chinese architecture in the 1930s. It constitutes the translation of two pieces originally written in Chinese: the first is a book review penned by Liang Sicheng in 1934, and the second is the book’s author Yue Jiazao’s response, written shortly after, but not published until 2018.
To read Part I, click here. To read Part II, click here.
In early 1934, the pioneering Chinese architectural historian Liang Sicheng 梁思成 (1901--1972) published a scathing review of Yue Jiazao’s (1867--1944) 乐嘉藻 book, titled A History of Chinese Architecture 中国建筑史 in the influential Ta-Kung-Pao (L’Impartial) 大公报.[1] The book was privately funded and printed the previous year and is now acknowledged as the first history on Chinese architecture by a Chinese scholar. At the time of writing, Liang, who had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Architecture Department in 1927, was immersed in the research of traditional Chinese architecture in his capacity as Director of Technical Studies at the Society [later Institute] for Research in Chinese Architecture 中国营造学社. As Liang made abundantly clear in his review, what he found objectionable in Yue’s book, was the latter’s conception and methodology of both history and architecture; the issue of “Chinese” was taken for granted. The fact that Yue was “Chinese” seemed to have sufficed.
Linji Monastery Pagoda. Photograph by Jiaqi Chen, 2018.
This was to have interesting repercussions later in Yue’s response to Liang’s article, which was written shortly after Liang’s review, but somehow never published until a few years ago. The entirety of the response, or what was left of it, was published in 2018 in the journal Guizhou Culture and History 贵州文史丛刊.[2] Yue’s retaliation focuses on the “Chinese” way of scholarship, asserting the validity of both his understanding and methodology of Chinese architecture. Although more “modern” types of material such as photographs were also occasionally used, Yue’s was a philological, textual approach to the subject. His use of photographic material, for instance, could be seen as proof of his unfamiliarity and/or reluctance to accord it too much importance, as he pulled the photographs from newspapers and magazines of the time with their ascribed dates of construction of the structures without proof checking. Yue’s approach forms a stark contrast to Liang’s understanding of history, and indeed the historiography that was gaining popularity at the time. Known as the New Historiography, this new approach was a part of the Chinese literati’s effort to reinvigorate China against the ever-present danger/specter of imperial encroachment since the first Opium War (1839-1842). Liang’s own father Liang Qichao (1873-1929), the towering intellectual and spokesperson of his day, was the major instigator and proponent of this new approach.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, Liang Qichao and his colleagues advocated scientific historiography which emphasized source criticism and scientific methods, to organize China’s past in the service of the present. The New Historiography might have borne resemblance to, and indeed inherited Qing scholars’ evidential historiography. What is striking about it, however, is the dual dimension, that is, both the national and international dimension of the elder Liang’s understanding of history. For Liang Qichao, the purpose of historiography was to “invest new meanings or new values in historical reality, so as to inform the activities of the modern man.”[3] This historical approach was fundamentally informed by Western learning, and aimed at constructing a national history of China.[4] Although Yue, in his response to Liang Sicheng’s review, appeared to be a staunch defender of his “Chinese” architectural history written more in the vein of the evidential scholars immediately before him, his attempt to write a history of Chinese architecture, nevertheless, could be seen as a part of the “Reorganizing the National Past” project 整理国故 propagated by the elder Liang’s friend and colleague Hu Shi (1891-1962). Yue’s determination to write a never-before-attempted history of Chinese architecture was prompted not only by his lifelong interest in the subject, but also by the urgent desire to “organize” the materials of Chinese architecture. In his response he described these materials as “the mess of two thousand years,” and wanted to organize these into a “modern” system for the benefit of scholars both from China and beyond.
What does all this have to do with us in the twenty-first century? Well, history’s ghost is never laid to rest, and we are again encountering the specter of the West that haunted the Chinese scholars more than 80 years ago, manifested variously as the West, the outsider, the foreigner, the Westerner, the Japanese, the European in these two documents. Liang Sicheng, with his professional training in the United States, accused Yue of inadequate understanding and faulty methodology, whereas Yue, the traditional literatus with a keen interest in learning and absorbing the “new learning,” accused Liang of slavish submission to the West, calling it “a sickness of the social psyche.” But historical conditions were such that Yue had to borrow “modern,” i.e., European/Japanese parlance and practices such as evolutionary history, European examples, even the somewhat far-fetched notion of “freedom of thought, freedom of speech” in defense of himself.
“Are we capable of imagining Chinese architecture as a living tradition and crafting a history that does justice not only to its creations both marvelous and mundane, but also to its creators well known and anonymous, in the past and at present, with an eye to its future? ”
In the past few decades, there has been a call to rewrite the history of Chinese architecture, the very model that Liang and his colleagues created more than half a century ago. Reading contemporary debates together with what came head-to-head on the problem of “how” to write this history, articulated more than 80 years ago, might provide much-needed new insight. Indeed, how does one write a history of Chinese architecture today? It is not a sheer coincidence that there is now such a call for rewriting that history: the Chinese architect Zhao Chen plainly states that it is time for a different version of Chinese architectural history because we live in a much-changed world from the one inhabited by Liang Sicheng and his contemporaries. Zhao is referring to the power and position of contemporary China in the world, where according to him, China’s geopolitical significance demands a rethinking of its architectural history.
How should this rethinking proceed? Along a party line where history must conform to the “Chinese characteristics” of the Chinese system? One is reminded of the fact that the first “official” version of A History of Traditional Chinese Architecture 中国古代建筑史, was official in more than one way: not only was it a massive collective endeavor—spanning seven years through eight revisions—of a group of China’s most renowned professional architectural historians, but it was also a “political assignment” from the central government of the new regime.[5] Or is this history to be written along an increasingly isolationist and xenophobic line where anything foreign must be expunged according to current nationalistic sentiments riding the high waves of an ascending China, perversely bolstered by a global pandemic where China’s draconian lockdown measures seem justifiable and justified to many of its citizens? Or still, is it to be written along the design/professional line that compartmentalizes history and historical knowledge into neat storage boxes as dead stuff retrievable for convenient reuse, a feat in which many contemporary architects seem quite adept? Are we capable of imagining Chinese architecture as a living tradition, and crafting a history that does justice not only to its creations both marvelous and mundane, but also to its creators well known and anonymous, in the past and at present, with an eye to its future?
What follows is a translation of Liang Sicheng’s review. Yue Jiazao’s response, also translated into English, will be published as a sequel to the present article.[6]
Notes
[1] See Liang Sicheng, “Reading and Repudiating Errors in A History of Chinese Architecture by Yue Jiazao,” originally published in Ta-Kung-Pao, on March 3, 1934, page 12. It was later included in Liang Sicheng, Complete works, vol. 2, by Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, published in 2001. I thank Ms. Lin Zhu for allowing me to reprint Professor Liang’s article in Chinese here.
[2] See Li Fang, Pang Sichun, eds., “A document of debate buried for 80 years” 一份湮没了八十余年的争辩文献 Guizhou Culture and History 2018.1:109 ---119. The Chinese editors of the article (link here ) briefly explain the context of the article, including a short introduction to Yue Jiazao’s life and work, before appending Yue’s response as well as Liang’s review as the bulk of the article.
[3] See Liang Qichao, Appendix to Method of Chinese Historiography 中国历史研究法补编, published from his lecture notes from October 1926 to May 1927 at Tsinghua University where he was a professor.
[4] Q. Edward Wang, Inventing China Through History: The May Fourth Approach to Historiography. Albany: State University of New York, 2001.
[5] See Liu Dunzhen, ed., Zhongguo gudai jianzhushi 中国古代建筑史 [A History of Traditional Chinese Architecture], Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1980, and Pan Guxi‘s preface to the Research Institute of Chinese Architecture: An Oral History (1953-1965) 中国建筑研究室口述史(1953-1965), published by the Institute of Architectural History & Theory of Southeast University in 2013.
[6] I thank Professor Swati Chattopadhyay for her immense patience and meticulous scrutiny in editing my translation. My gratitude also goes to the other editors of PLATFORM, especially Professor Zeynep Kezer for her help with polishing my text, and Giuliana F. Vaccarino Gearty for laying out the pieces. A big thank-you to Jiaqi Chen for his suggestions for translation, and help with materials and other related matters. Thank Boyi Ding also for sharing his photograph. All remaining errors and inadequacies are mine.
