"Between the Titans: Constructions of Modernity and Tradition," in Bridges to Heaven: Essays on East...

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The fledgling practice of Chinese architectural history in the early twentieth century necessarily focused on identifying and documenting surviving monuments. On the basis of fieldwork by Chinese, Japanese, and Westerners, scattered monuments were categorized into distinct typological, material, and stylistic groupings and periods. In contrast to the traditional Chinese practice of dividing historical periods by dynasty, scholars turned to differing “modern” criteria to construct stylistic periods. Care-ful analysis of modern classification and periodization schemes betray partisan na-tionalism, Sino-Marxist historical materialism, and even concerns for local tourism. Much present-day research on premodern Chinese architectural history still adheres to such twentieth-century constructs of China’s architectural history. For instance, stylistic attributes of buildings, as well as their components and building systems, are correlated with or compared to Western or Marxist developmental models—such as the divisions Classic, Baroque, and Mannerist or Primitive, Slave, Feudal, and Mod-ern. Such comparative schemes, however, must be understood as products of his-torical and cultural circumstance. Thus, in any approach involving an East-West or a Then-Now1 cultural comparison, one side must first be deconstructed, then recon-structed in the eyes of the other. In general, in the Chinese Republican era (1912–49), periodization schemes of Chinese architecture can be said to affirm nationalistic agendas, while after the formation of the People’s Republic in 1949 they tended to ad-here to Sino-Marxist dialectics. After an evaluation of these “modern criteria” for sty-listic periodization of traditional Chinese architecture, I will attempt to suggest new directions for periodization that may be more suited to China’s architectural heritage, its conception of architecture, and its traditional connection to both cultural rituals and imperishable words as “embodied images” (see below).

Between the Titans: Constructions of Modernity and Tradition at the Dawn of Chinese Architectural History

cary y. l iu

Elements of this essay were first developed at the College Art Association 1994 annual conference, in the panel “The Practice of Chinese Art History,” organized by Robert Thorp. I delivered versions of the current paper at the Colloquium Series, Council on East Asian Studies, Yale University, April 4, 2007; the Tang Center, Princeton

University, October 18, 2007; and the New England East Asian Art History Seminar, Harvard University, March 15, 2008. I garnered valuable suggestions at each presentation and want to thank all the participants.1 Lowenthal 1985.

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part one : canons and methods

the influence of modernism in the construction of chinese architectural history

The Classic-Baroque-Mannerist scheme can be seen in the writings and teachings of the architect and architectural historian Liang Sicheng (1901–1972).2 Liang received a Beaux Arts architectural education at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 1927. He participated in a major conference on Far Eastern culture and society at Princeton University in 1947 (fig. 1), and in the same year received an honorary degree from Princeton.3 Liang’s education and his re-ceptiveness to Western methods were strongly influenced by his father, the renowned journalist-scholar-reformer Liang Qichao (1873–1929).4 Advocating the adoption of a Sinitic version of social Darwinism, reformist Confucianism, and Western scientific methodologies in China, Liang Qichao was involved as a leader of the failed Hundred Days Reform, along with his teacher Kang Youwei (1858–1927), in the summer of 1898, which led to his exile to Japan. His eldest son, Liang Sicheng, was born in 1901 in Tokyo, where he attended a Chinese school until the family returned to China in 1912.

Living in Japan, Liang Qichao was influenced by the Meiji Restoration as a model for modernization and met many Japanese sinologists including the journalist- commentator- academic Naitō Konan (Naitō Torajirō; 1866–1934), whose influential theories of Chinese history may have indirectly served as a framework for the peri-odization of Chinese architectural history as constructed in Japan, in the West, and even in China.5 The so-called Naitō Hypothesis—that China’s modern period began after the decline of aristocratic oppression in the late Tang dynasty and the rise of im-perial despotism and progress for commoners in the Song dynasty—was articulated in the essays “Monarchy or Republic?” (1914) and “General View of the Tang and Song Periods” (1922). Liang Qichao had returned to China by the time these essays appeared,6 but there are strong similarities between Naitō’s theories of Chinese his-tory and the periodization schemes for Chinese intellectual history and architectural history, respectively, of Liang Qichao and Liang Sicheng, as well as many other Japa-nese and Chinese sinologists of that period. Depending on the different historical cri-teria being considered, Naitō sometimes divided Chinese history into three periods: antiquity ( jōko; up to Early Han), medieval (chūko; Later Han to Tang dynasties), and modern (kinsei ; Song to Qing dynasties). Key for Naitō was to identify a modern pe-riod in China and its distinguishing characteristics. The differences between the an-tiquity and medieval were less well defined, and each period was sometimes further

fig 1

2 Liang Sicheng 2001; Liang Sicheng 1984.3 In April 1947, Liang participated in the Far Eastern Culture and Society Conference at Princeton University organized by George Rowley. In conjunction with the conference, five exhibitions on Chinese art were organized at the museum, including one with Liang’s drawings and photographs of Chinese architecture and sculpture. At the conference, Liang gave two lectures: “Tang and Song Sculp-ture” and “Architectural Discoveries.” Later that year, Liang received an honorary degree from Princeton. See Fairbank

1994, 151–53; Far Eastern Culture and Society 1947.4 On Liang Qichao’s intellectual thought and historical periodization, see Liang Qichao 1959; Levenson 1953; Chang Hao 1971; Huang 1972; Tang Xiaobing 1996.5 Fogel 2004; Tang Xiaobing 1996, 14–16, 29–33, 70–71. On Naitō’s views on Liang, see Fogel 1984, 89–90, 100, 325 n. 26. On the interest of Chinese reformers in the Meiji Restoration, see Fogel 1984, 89–90, 95, 304 n. 77.6 Naitō Konan 1914, vol. 5: 308–29; Naitō Torajirō 1922; Miyakawa Hisayuki 1955, 535.

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l iu : the dawn of chinese architectural history

1 Chauncey J. Hamlin2 A. G. Wenley3 Langdon Warner4 Arthur W. Hummel5 Du Bois S. Morris6 Osvald Siren7 Liang Ssu-ch’eng8 George Rowley9 David N. Rowe10 Fung Yu-lan11 George E. Taylor12 Chen Ta13 J. J. L. Duyvendak14 E. R. Hughes15 W. L. Holland

16 K. S. Latourette17 L. Bachhofer18 J. D. Breckenridge19 B. Rowland20 J. M. Plumer21 H. H. F. Jayne22 L. C. Goodrich23 Arthur N. Young24 Owen Lattimore25 Milton J. Clark26 Chen Han-seng27 Tung-tsu Chu28 Harold D. Lasswell29 Ernest T. DeWald30 William W. Lockwood

31 Reuben H. Gross Jr.32 Sandy Pringle33 John A. Pope34 Laurence Sickman35 Ransom R. Patrick36 Alfred Salmony37 K. T. Wu38 John E. Orchard39 Wang Kan-Yu40 C. Martin Wilbur41 Chen Shou-chiang42 Mortimer Graves43 Wilma Fairbank44 Charles S. Gardner45 Ch’en Meng-chia

46 William W. Marvel47 A. H. C. Hill48 P. J. Kelleher49 D. R. Coffin50 Charles B. Fahs51 Derk Bodde52 Roger F. Evans53 George B. Cressey54 H. G. Creel55 Knight Biggerstaff56 Chih Meng57 Alan Priest58 H. Lester Cooke Jr.59 A. Doak Barnett60 Karl A. Wittfogel

figure 1 Liang Sicheng with the participants in Far Eastern Culture and Society Conference, Princeton University, 1947

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subdivided.7 Despite its complexities and ambiguities, his historical periodization has generally been viewed as a tripartite division of antiquity, medieval, and modern. In the opinion of the historian and sinologist Miyakawa Hisayuki, Naitō’s periodization of Chinese history may have been “affected by the prevailing division of European history into three periods.”8 In the same essay Miyakawa noted that “Japanese and European historians take their own national histories as the rule and regard Chinese history as an exception. For Naitō Chinese history itself is the norm of world history.”9

Miyakawa also likened Naitō’s historiographic development of nations and peo-ples to the biological analogy of progress through the stages of “infancy, youth, matu-rity, and senescence.”10 This quadripartite progression is remarkably similar to Liang Qichao’s division of all tides of intellectual thought (sichao) and transitory phenom-ena (Samsara) according to the four stages of life in Buddhist doctrine: Formation or Birth (qimeng ), High or Life (quansheng ), Transformation or Old Age (tuifen), and Decline or Death (shuailuo).11 Such a life cycle was applied to the succession of intel-lectual movements by Liang Qichao, but for the Naitō school it served as a universal pattern for world history and the destiny of nations, ominously setting the stage for Japan’s claim of legitimacy to lead in a revitalization of China. According to Joshua A. Fogel, by the early 1920s, Naitō “referred to Japan’s role in the international control of China as a ‘mission’…He revived the moving-center-of-culture theory, and explicitly suggested that the center of East Asian culture was moving from Kwangtung [China] to Japan.” Fogel cites Naitō: “The Chinese people will reap all the benefits provided by foreigners and be able to correct their basically larcenous nature.”12 By this point, the discourse had moved beyond polite academic exchange to righteous national des-tiny. Whatever feelings Liang Sicheng may have retained for his birthplace, Japan, his reaction to the threat of Japanese militancy and claims to Chinese cultural leadership were subdued but sharp (as will be discussed below).

In assessing the similarities between Naitō’s and Liang Qichao’s periodization schemes for Chinese history—a biological analogy and a comparative or universal approach to world history—it is necessary to point out that they fulfilled very differ-ent national and political aims. As conceived by Liang Qichao, Chinese periodization was based on the authority of the past. With the European Renaissance as a paradigm, he saw modernization as a rebirth rooted in tradition: “liberation through the revival of antiquity” ( yi fugu wei jiefang ).13 According to Liang, the revival that took place in evidential scholarship of the early Qing led to a new spiritualism characterized by scientific methods and, ultimately, to a modern China. His arguments went beyond national “self-strengthening” (ziqiang ) that was felt to come from acquiring Western

7 On Naitō’s periodization, see Fogel 1984, 161–210.8 Miyakawa Hisayuki 1955, 541. Naitō’s source for his hypothesis may derive indirectly from the German philos-opher Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936) and to a lesser degree from Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801); see ibid., 536.9 Miyakawa Hisayuki 1955, 542.10 Ibid., 536; Fogel 1984, 52–53.11 Liang Qichao 1959, 20. Such an evolutionary cycle of progress also resembles Kang Youwei’s invocation of Three Ages (sanshi )—Ages of Disorder (luan), Rising

Peace (shengping ), and Great Peace (taiping )—attributed to Confucius in the Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu). On Kang’s interpretation of the Three Ages, see Chan 1963, 724–27. On Liang’s obser-vation that Western historians usually divided history into four progressive periods—ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary—see Tang Xiaobing 1996, 33–34.12 Fogel 1984, 225, and 64–67 passim.13 Liang Qichao 1921, 13; translation follows Liang Qichao 1959, 26. Also see Li Shiqiao 2002, 35, 42, 43.

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technologies to an understanding of their educational basis; Chinese tradition, valued as the essence or embodiment (ti ), could then be combined with these technologies and improve conditions resulting from Western modernity as utility or form ( yong ): Zhang Zhidong’s (1837–1909) famous dictum “Chinese learning for the fundamen-tal principles, Western learning for practical application” (tiyong ).14 Naitō had advo-cated a similar ideal, a Japanese “national essence” (kokutai ), in the face of western-ization, but for China he separated the development of culture from national politics and government.15 He viewed the development of Chinese history as a model for re-publicanism and world history, and he initially applauded the efforts of Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and their followers to revitalize China as a republic. Later Naitō’s views were adopted by his followers to justify an imperialistic Japanese agenda. As Leon Hurvitz noted: “Japan’s adventure in China, the worst of which Naitō Konan…ad-mittedly did not live to see, seems, on balance, to have had the support of virtually all of Japan’s specialists in the study of China’s cultural history.”16

In developing the field of Chinese architectural history and the practice of Chi-nese modern architecture, the filial Liang Sicheng was strongly influenced by the teachings of his father, but he was also highly influenced by the intellectual model of Asian modernization as constructed in Japan. Liang Qichao guided the education and early careers of Liang Sicheng and his younger brother, the noted archaeologist Liang Siyong (1904–1954).17 The brothers were encouraged to learn English, science, as well as art and music, and on their father’s recommendation they collaborated with others on a translation of H. G. Wells’s Outline of History.18 For Liang Qichao, the theme of this book—that the world would be revived by education and not by revolution—may have been especially appealing. Liang Qichao also supported Sicheng’s architectural education abroad and helped plan his architectural tour of Europe after graduation. While he was a student in America, Sicheng received from his father a copy of the early twelfth-century Yingzao fashi, a Song dynasty imperial building manual.

A preliminary draft of this manual was completed in 1091 but was never issued. Supposedly compiled by “vulgar” building craftsmen, the text did not meet with the emperor’s lofty literary standards. In 1097, the painter, builder, and official Li Jie (1035–1110) was ordered to recompile the work. The task was completed, and the manual was first printed in 1103. When the Jurchens captured the Northern Song capital of Kaifeng in 1126, however, most copies of the manual were lost, and it is

14 On the self-strengthening movement, see Spence 1990, 197, 216–30. For tiyong, see Ding Weizhi and Chen Song 1995; Yü 1993, 128–29, 136. On tiyong thinking as a criterion for the analysis of modern Chinese architecture, see Rowe and Kuan 2002.15 On kokutai, see Fogel 1984, 43–44, 61–62. Viewing Chinese culture as distinct from the nation or its people established the justification of a shifting center of culture that might one day move to beyond China’s borders to Japan. See ibid., 67–69, 243–45.16 Hurvitz 1985, 769.17 On Liang Qiqiao’s influence on Liang Sicheng’s educa-tion and learning, see Li Shiqiao 2002, 35–45; Fairbank 1994, 3–9, 15–38 passim.

18 On Liang Sicheng’s education in Beijing at a modern Anglican school and then at a preparatory school and college at Tsinghua College, see Fairbank 1994, 8–9. While in Japan, Liang Sicheng had been enrolled in a Chinese school. It is unclear how he may have been influenced by Japanese ideas about China during this period. In the summers of 1920–22, Liang Qichao conducted private lessons in Chinese studies for a select group including Liang Sicheng and Liang Siyong. The translation of Wells’s Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind (1919) was undertaken during this period with revisions by Liang Qichao (Fairbank 1994, 15–16). See Liang Sicheng et al. 1927.

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uncertain how much of the work was actually transmitted to the Southern Song. Whatever survived was reedited and issued in 1145. It was supposedly followed in the construction of the palace buildings at the new capital at Lin’an (present-day Hang-zhou). A rare manuscript copy of the Yingzao fashi was found in 1919 in the Nan-jing Jiangsu Provincial Library by Zhu Qiqian (1872–1964), the minister who had been charged with repairing Beijing’s historic palaces and other structures. This copy was collated with other surviving editions of the manual and printed in imitation of Southern Song printing in 1925. It was a copy of this edition that Liang Qichao per-sonally reviewed and commented on before sending it to his son. Research on this manual was to occupy the rest of Liang Sicheng’s life.19

Upon Liang Sicheng’s return to China in 1928, Liang Qichao also helped arrange his son’s appointment as assistant professor in charge, and then professor in charge, of the newly established Department of Architecture (Jianzhuxi) at Northeastern University (Dongbei daxue) in Mukden, Manchuria (present-day Shenyang, Liao ning Province). This department was one of the first two modern schools of architecture in China, and the use of the term “architecture” ( jianzhu) is significant.20 As a profes-sional category and academic discipline, architecture was new to China, and the Jap-anese term kenchiku (C: jianzhu) was adopted into the Chinese vocabulary. In Japan, the term kenchiku was first used in the Oranda jii of Hendrik Doeff (1777–1835) as a translation for the Dutch word metselen, meaning “to lay bricks” or, more broadly, “to build.”21 This early eighteenth-century Japanese-Dutch dictionary was based on a Dutch-French dictionary first printed in Amsterdam in 1710, Francois Halma’s (1653–1722) Woordenboek der Nederduitsche en Fransch taalen…Dictionnaire flamand et françois. Doeff was the Dutch commissioner in the Dejima trading post in Naga-saki from 1803 to 1817. He compiled his dictionary in 1816–26 with the assistance of Yoshio Joen (Yoshio Kennosuke; 1785–1831), the chief interpreter of the Naga-saki port, and others. Thirty manuscript copies of the so-called Doeff-Halma (Dūfu Ha ru ma) dictionary were made at that time. An 1849 request to publish was denied, but in 1855 permission was granted and the dictionary was printed in five volumes from 1855 to 1858. This work was apparently produced in Japan as a means of facilitat-ing Japanese-Dutch trade.22 It was through translations of the Dutch terms metselen and bouwen (also meaning “to build”) that the term kenchiku entered the Japanese vocabulary in the nineteenth century. The term was used as a verb meaning “to build,” but early on it began to acquire the meanings of “building” and “architecture.” Previ-ously, such terms as the Japanese zōka and the Chinese yingzao had been used to des-ignate “building” and “architecture.”

19 Fairbank 1994, 29, 49, 51; Li Shiqiao 2002, 35. Repro-duced as a frontispiece in Zhongguo yingzao xueshe huikan 2, no. 3 (1931), is a short manuscript by Liang Qichao regarding the building manual. For Liang Sicheng’s research on the manual, see Liang Sicheng 1983. On the history and editions of the Yingzao fashi, see Yu Jiaxi 1980, juan 9: 483–86. On modernist agendas behind the compilation and promotion of this manual, see Li Shiqiao 2003, 470–89.20 Fairbank 1994, 33–34, 41–44. Earlier, in 1923, the Archi-tecture Department (Jianzhuke) of Suzhou Industrial

College (Suzhou gongye zhuanmen xuexiao) was estab-lished by Liu Shiyin (1893–1973) and Liu Dunzhen (Liu Tuen-tseng; 1897–1968).21 This work, also known as Dūfu Haruma, seems to have been mistaken as having Chinese authorship in Naka-tani Narihito 2003, 65. Appreciation to Stanislaus Fung for alerting me to this article.22 I am indebted to Martin Heijdra and Sinéad Kehoe for their assistance in research on, and translations of, Dutch and Japanese source materials.

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Following the modernization drive after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Western building practices and designs had been widely incorporated into traditional Japa-nese wood construction practices. In reaction, Itō Chūta (1867–1954) was among the first to champion a return to the essence of traditional Asian models as a basis for modern Japanese architecture, a strategy echoed in Liang Qichao’s call for a modern “ liberation through the revival of antiquity.” Itō was an influential architectural histo-rian and architect who had conducted survey and research work on the oldest wood buildings in Japan at Hōryūji temple at Nara and also taught at the School of Engi-neering at Tokyo Imperial University from 1897 to 1928. Itō was largely responsible for popularizing the use of kenchiku to designate the new category of “architecture.” He argued that the aesthetic aspect of “architecture” was not adequately conveyed by the term zōka, which tended to subordinate “building” to engineering and technology. In the 1890s Itō argued that architecture should be considered among the fine arts; though the translation of kenchiku as “architecture” was still not ideal, he proposed, and partly succeeded in, renaming the Zōka Gakkai (Building Institute) as Kenchiku Kyōkai ( Architectural Association).23

The term kenchiku entered China as an “original graphic loan” pronounced jian-zhu by the early 1870s.24 In the titles of journal and magazine articles during the late nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, the term assumed the con-notations of either an engineered “construction” or designed “architecture.”25 In 1928 when Liang Sicheng became head of the Department of Architecture at Northeastern University, “architecture” as an aesthetic endeavor and academic discipline in China had come to be accepted.

After Liang Qichao’s death in 1929, Liang Sicheng relocated to Beijing, just in ad-vance of the Japanese takeover of Manchuria in September 1931.26 There he accepted a position from 1931 to 1945 as director of research of the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture (Zhongguo yingzao xueshe), an organization established by Zhu Qiqian, who had been responsible for publishing the 1925 edition of the Song building manual Yingzao fashi. As director, Liang Sicheng initiated a series of sur-vey expeditions to find and document surviving architectural monuments across the country. His actions were met with puzzlement, and possibly consternation, by Zhu Qiqian. Traditional Chinese and Japanese scholars—such as Zhu Qiqian and Liang Qichao—had approached architectural studies by relying on literary and historical sources, whereas Liang Sicheng advocated verifiable “material objects” (shiwu) in the form of surviving monuments and visual materials, such as murals and paintings, in addition to textual documents (wenxian).27 It is likely that Liang Sicheng learned

23 See Nakatani Narihito 2003, 65–68; Reynolds 1991, 45–46; Itō Chūta 1894, 4–9. In 1897 the name Zōka Gakkai was changed only to Kenchiku Gakkai, not Kenchiku Kyōkai as Itō had proposed.24 See Masini 1993, 180; Fung 1999, 207.25 A preliminary listing of article titles was compiled using the Quanguo baokan suoyin online database; the earliest title using the term jianzhu is in 1884. The year 1920 is the earliest appearance of “architecture” ( jianzhu) among book titles listed in Minguo shiqi zong shumu; see Beijing tushu-

guan 1993, vol. 15, pp. 328ff. By the late 1920s, such usage becomes common. I received invaluable help in compiling these materials from Martin Heijdra.26 Liang Sicheng’s first wife, the artist, architect, and writer Lin Huiyin (1904–1955), was diagnosed with tuber-culosis in late 1930, leading the family to relocate to Beijing for her health.27 Li Shiqiao 2002, 36–37. In the Chinese version of Liang Sicheng’s architectural history survey, evidence is distin-guished as “material object” or “textual document.” In its

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this methodology from his art historical studies in America, as demonstrated in the method of “comparative analysis” in Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture.28 The priority of “material objects”—surviving buildings and visual materials—was evident in the first article Liang Sicheng published in the society’s Bulletin in 1932. It was preceded by two articles. The first, by Hamada Kōsaku, concerned the relation-ship between Hōryūji in Japan and the architecture of the Han and Six Dynasties. The second article, by Tanabe Yasushi, focused on the architectural significance of the Tamamushi Shrine cabinet (ca. 650) formerly stored at Hōryūji. Building on Itō Chūta’s earlier architectural study of Hōryūji, these Japanese-authored articles sug-gested through indirect textual and comparative evidence that surviving buildings in Japan were the only true remaining wood examples of a Tang architectural style.29 At that moment, without any known Tang timber buildings surviving in China to serve as markers, Chinese Tang architecture was successfully constructed in Japan’s image. In this manner, non-Tang buildings in Japan were used to define Tang architecture.

The Bulletin article by Liang that followed straight away set forth a different meth-odological approach.30 Instead of relying on early examples in Japan, he expressed confidence in finding actual Tang buildings in China. According to Liang, in the ab-sence (up to then) of surviving wood buildings as primary evidence, surviving Tang dynasty material objects—particularly the murals at the Dunhuang cave temples—warranted close examination as visual evidence in combination with textual sources. Using a typological analysis of different building components, he hypothesized what elements of a Tang building might look like.31 Such an analytic approach was in accord with Liang Qichao’s call for a “scientific methodology” (kexue de yanjiufa), as well as with his promotion of specialized historical studies of cultural artifacts (wenwu), such as architecture. In fact, Liang Qichao had intended to write about the history of archi-tecture as part of a sweeping general history of China.32 The discovery in 1937, after a long search by Liang Sicheng, of the Tang dynasty Foguangsi temple wood hall (re-built in 857; fig. 2) at Wutaishan, Shanxi Province, reclaimed cultural authority for China. In his early published reports about the hall, little reference was made to Jap-anese examples, itself a silent but strong rejoinder.33 Years later, Liang Sicheng’s sec-ond wife, Lin Zhu (born 1928), was very clear about his feelings at the time: “The Japanese had incessantly been saying that there already were no longer any surviving

fig 2

English-language counterpart, the materials are reorganized and presented as “evidence” or “indirect material evidence.” See, respectively, Liang Sicheng 1955 and Liang Sicheng 1984.28 Liang Sicheng was familiar with and valued this book; see Fletcher 1931.29 Hamada Kōsaku 1932, 1–60; Tanabe Yasushi 1932, 61–74. Both of these articles were translated by Liu Dunzhen, a leading figure in the society who had received his architec-tural education in Japan. On Liu’s relationship with Liang Sicheng, see Fairbank 1994, 58–59. Itō Chūta 1898.30 Liang Sicheng 1932.31 Such a methodology also had its pitfalls, as is discussed in Steinhardt 2004.32 Li Shiqiao 2002, 43–44.33 In Liang Sicheng 1984, 3, passing mention is later made

of the halls in Japan as “Chinese exports.” For the initial report on Foguangsi, see Liang Sicheng 1944–1945. The significance of this discovery was officially recognized after Liberation in 1949. A research team was deployed and the hall was renovated in 1950. In addition, Liang’s 1945 article was revised and reprinted in Wenwu cankao ziliao, no. 5–6 (1953): 76–121. A second Tang dynasty temple hall dating to 782 was found in 1953, but is heavily repaired and reno-vated. See Qi Yingtao and Chai Zejun 1980; Chai Zejun and Liu Xianwu 1980. See also Fairbank 1994, 94–97. In Stein-hardt 2004, 228–54, it is argued that Liang’s general failure to mention older Japanese structures, as well as additional Tang halls later found in China, possibly resulted from his bias for treating Foguangsi as an iconic image representing an imperial and elite vision of the history of Chinese archi-tecture—a selective history.

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timber-structure architecture in China, and that if anyone wanted to see wooden architecture made in the Tang, they only could go to Nara, Japan.”34

In many ways Japan can be thought of as an intermediary for the introduction of Western ideas into China, and for ideas about China into the West. Consequently, the construction of the image of China in Japan came to have a significant impact on how China and the West viewed each other. Moreover, the image of Chinese ar-chitecture constructed by Japanese historians influenced not only how this architec-ture was seen in China but also how it was perceived in the West. Certain common-place ideas about Chinese architecture may have been influenced by agenda-driven theoretical constructs propagated in Japan, some of which are still prevalent today. A prime example is the widespread notion that almost all Chinese buildings were made of wood. Even Liang Sicheng accepted this claim, while at the same time rec-ognizing the importance of stone and masonry structures, including vaulted tombs and beamless halls (wuliang dian), fortifications, pagodas, bridges, and residences.35 While wood construction may have predominated in some regions, there have al-ways been a significant number of masonry monuments. In early characterizations

figure 2 Foguangsi wood hall. Tang dynasty, rebuilt 857, as rediscovered by Liang Sicheng. Wutaishan, Shanxi Province

34 Lin Zhu 2001, 86. Ironically, Liang Sicheng would later design the Memorial Hall of the Monk Jianzhen (finished posthumously in 1973) at the Damingsi temple in Yangzhou. The design of this complex derived from the so-called Tang style of Tōshōdaiji temple in Japan. The project received Japanese financial support and was built to commemorate renewed friendship between China and Japan. The Yang-zhou priest Jianzhen (Ganjin; died 763) journeyed to Japan

in 753 and founded the Ritsu sect of Buddhism in 759. The sect was based at Tōshōdaiji, where the buildings are some-times said to have been built by Jianzhen, but probably date to the late Nara period after his death. The Foguangsi temple hall is compared to Tōshōdaiji in Liang Sicheng 1963; Sickman and Soper 1956, 243–54.35 For examples, see Liang Sicheng 1984, 123–85.

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of Chinese architecture, masonry and earth along with wood were considered to be the major building materials. For instance, according to Banister Fletcher, “The Chi-nese built chiefly in timber or brick”; Itō Chūta’s Chinese Architectural History (Shina kenchiku shi), originally published in 1931, lists eight major categories of building materials.36 While a preference for wood cannot be denied, it may be due to the spe-cial deference given to wood as having a living spirit.37 Undeniably, however, a large percentage of built structures in China were made of masonry or a combination of masonry and timber. The notion that building in China was predominantly of wood perhaps stems from an early twentieth-century consensus that developed as an out-come of the rivalry between Chinese and Japanese scholars over the survival of the earliest Tang wood architecture.38

An alternative interpretation views traditional timber construction as part of an integrated system along with the use of masonry and tile. The standard, tripartite ver-tical division of a building—raised stone foundation, hall body with wood columnar frame, and a tiled roof 39—corresponds to the division of building trades in traditional practice. Masons were responsible for stone foundations, carpenters for timber work, and tile workers for roofs. This three-part division of labor is also reflected in build-ing manuals, including Yu Hao’s (second half of 10th century) Timberwork Manual (Mu jing ), Li Jie’s Yingzao fashi, and the Qing dynasty Building Methods of the Ministry of Works (Gongbu gongcheng zuofa, 1734).40

Liang Sicheng’s pioneering writings on Chinese architectural history in the 1930s and 1940s culminated in comprehensive surveys written with variations in Chinese and English. Drawing upon materials he had developed for teaching, History of Chinese Architecture (Zhongguo jianzhu shi) was drafted in 1946–47, first issued as offset-printed teaching materials in 1955, and only later published in 1985. A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture was written in English at about the same time, but only published in 1984.41 As discussed by Li Shiqiao in “Writing a Modern Chinese Archi-tectural History: Liang Sicheng and Liang Qichao,” the writings of Liang Sicheng ar-ticulated a broader intellectual agenda that reflected Liang Qichao’s historiographic theories.42 The connection between the work of father and son can be observed in

36 Fletcher 1931, 913. Itō Chūta 1931, 66–67.37 See Ruitenbeek 1993, 7–15.38 The architect Ralph Adams Cram (1863–1942) believed that ancient Chinese architectural style survived only in Japan, while in China he saw only a “decadent and erratic episode.” Nevertheless, Cram also noted that, in the past, masonry was the prevalent Chinese building material and that its use in contemporary China was still far more common than in Japan. See Cram 1901–1902. My appreciation to Tracy Miller for bringing this entry to my attention. Supporters claiming the predom-inance of wood often refer to “A Discussion of Rites” (Lilun) in the Writings of Xunzi, attributed to Xun Qing (late 4th–3rd century bce), which prescribed the use of stone for underground tombs. It is possibly a twentieth-century elaboration that asserts that underground archi-tecture for the dead was built of imperishable stone and that aboveground architecture for the living was built of perishable wood. Such a statement, however, is not supported by archaeological evidence. Before the Han

dynasty, tomb chambers were mostly built of wood, and many aboveground dwellings were, and still are, built of masonry or stone. See Liu, Nylan, Barbieri-Low et al. 2005, 211 n. 37.39 Fu Xinian 1984, 11, pl. 1.4.40 The tripartite vertical division of buildings may also reflect the cosmological harmony of earthly (foundations), human (building proper), and heavenly (roof) realms—the Three Powers (sancai ) as outlined in the Book of Change (Yi jing); see Zhou yi zhengyi, “Shuo gua,” juan 9: 93–94. Surviving fragments of the Timberwork Manual (Mu jing) recorded in Shen Gua 1975, juan 18: 177–78 (no. 299), divide buildings into three sections: upper, middle, and lower parts. A similar tripartite scheme is echoed by the stone-work, woodwork, and tilework division in the Yingzao fashi. On these three manuals, see Ruitenbeek 1993, 25–29. On the Mu jing, see also Needham et al. 1971, 81–84, 128, 141; Xia Nai 1982, 74–78, 73.41 See Fairbank 1984, xviii–xix; Fairbank 1994, 148–54.42 Li Shiqiao 2002, 35–45.

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the surveys by Liang Sicheng: (1) the study of Chinese architectural history as a spe-cialized cultural artifact; (2) the “scientific methodology” in documenting buildings; and (3) the analogy between historical periodization of Chinese architecture and biology 43—a life cycle leading to a rebirth of a modern Chinese architecture rooted in tradition (“ liberation through the revival of antiquity”).44 Many of these ideas were also evident in the scholarship on Chinese history and architectural history of schol-ars in Japan, such as Naitō Konan and Itō Chūta. One other concern they all shared was the need to position Asian culture and its architecture within a global geography (space) and history (time) as China transitioned from “all under heaven” (tianxia) to a “country in the world” ( guojia).45

In his 1931 Chinese Architectural History, Itō Chūta posed the question, “What posi-tion does Chinese architecture occupy among the architecture of the world?”46 This question must have struck Liang Sicheng (and also Itō Chūta) when reading Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture, in which the “Tree of Architecture” (fig. 3) was limited to the historical evolution of Western architectural styles. These were por-trayed as influenced by geographic, geologic, climatic, religious, social, and histor-ical factors and analyzed by a comparison of plans, walls, openings, roofs, columns, moldings, and ornament. Asian architecture was relegated to the irrelevant category of “non-historical styles,” meaning traditions that were thought to have no historical bearing on the Western tradition.47 Liang Sicheng took up this challenge, organizing his surveys of Chinese architecture in an analytic, comparative, and illustrative man-ner similar to Fletcher’s (figs. 4, 5).48 By 1941 he and his teams had covered two hun-dred counties in fifteen provinces to find and document surviving monuments from which to grow China’s own tree. Li Shiqiao observes that Liang “stressed the idea that Chinese architecture is a system…among other systems of architecture in the world, with its roots evidenced in…Chinese antiquity” and took delight in pointing out linkages between Greek, Indian, Buddhist, and Chinese architecture. Liang also de-vised a “Chinese Order”—a tripartite system combining a wooden bracket set (dou-gong ) with a column shaft and base—thereby invoking comparison with the Classi-cal Orders in Western architecture (fig. 6).49 In Japan, Itō Chūta and others advocated a return to ancient timber-frame models to establish the Shrine and Temple style (shajiyō) as a national architectural style. A basic premise for this return rested on

fig 3

fig 4

fig 5

fig 6

43 Liang Sicheng 1984, 3; Li Shiqiao 2002, 40.44 In 1955 this last view would cause Liang Sicheng to be officially criticized for associations with the Big Roof (dawuding ) style of architectural modernity, despite his actually having been in opposition. See Lin Zhu 2001, 201–11; Rowe and Kuan 2002, 87–106.45 Levenson 1953, 109–22. See also Tang Xiaobing 1996, 242 n. 10; Li Shiqiao 2002, 38–39, 40–41.46 Itō Chūta 1931, 4–12.47 Fletcher 1931, iii, 910–21. For Itō Chūta’s opinion of A History of Architecture, see Itō Chūta 1931, 9. This outlook parallels Hegel’s and some European historians’ view of China as stagnant and lacking historical evolution; thus, outside the “World’s” history (see Fogel 1984, 3–5). After writing this essay, I found a similar observation about

Fletcher’s “Tree of Architecture” in Hui Da Cheng 2006, chap. 2, p. 32.48 The influence of Fletcher’s A History of Architecture on the methodologies used by Liang Sicheng, Itō Chūta, and others in the early twentieth century should not be under-estimated and deserves further study. Fletcher’s analysis of architectural style by six influences, architectural character, examples, and comparative analysis of essential features is more or less followed by Itō Chūta in Itō Chūta 1931, esp. 13–70.49 Li Shiqiao 2002, 38. For Liang Sicheng the Yingzao fashi imperial building manual must have represented the early codification of such a building system, and to him the manual must have ranked alongside Vitruvius’s Ten Books of Architecture (ca. 27 bce) and Alberti’s Ten Books on Architecture (1452).

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fig 7

Itō’s influential proposal that columnar entasis and the building proportions of Japa-nese temple halls—particularly Hōryūji—evidenced a connection to ancient Etrus-can temples (fig. 7).50 In Buddhist architecture, Itō was interested in developing an eclectic style combining elements of Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, South-east Asian, and Euro-American traditions with modern technology. Itō saw Japanese culture and Buddhism as reflecting a “progression from India through China to its culmination in Japan, and through India, Japan was linked to the West.”51 This new eclectic style reinforced the image of Japan not only as part of a broader Buddhist Asia and world, but as its leader.52 In these ways, both Liang and Itō developed links joining Asia to a global “Tree of Architecture.”

Reference to Classical Orders also served as a didactic device to introduce Western audiences to Chinese architecture. In Liang’s periodization of Chinese architecture in his Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture, after a cursory discussion of earlier periods, he divided the life cycle of Chinese architecture into three stages: Age of Vigor (Tang dynasty), Elegance (Song–Yuan dynasties), and Rigidity (Ming–Qing dynasties). These three stages corresponded neatly with the characterizations of the masculine and bold Doric, feminine and graceful Ionic, and ornate and decadent Corinthian orders formulated in Western architecture.53 Liang’s periodization echoed, or possibly played against, the image of Chinese architecture constructed in Japan as outlined in

figure 3 The “Tree of Architecture” in Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture (1931)

figure 4 Comparative analysis method used by Banister Fletcher. Diagram of Chinese architecture

50 See Wendelken 1996, 28–37.51 Wendelken 2000, 821–22.52 Jaffe 2006. See also Esenbel 2004.53 Liang Sicheng must have been thoroughly acquainted with the Classical Orders through the Beaux Arts training he received, as well as through his familiarity with

Fletcher’s A History of Architecture (Fletcher 1931, 84–117). On the Greek orders, Fletcher comments: “In architecture there is the sturdy strength of the Doric Order, the clear-cut beauty of the Ionic, and the florid detail of the Corinthian” (Fletcher 1931, 76).

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Itō Chūta’s Chinese Architectural History and Architectural Decoration in China.54 Strug-gling with many of the same issues, both Liang and Itō adopted different nationalistic agendas and characterized the Tang dynasty as the Classic or most flourishing stage of Chinese architecture, while characterizing post-Tang architecture as reflecting periods of refinement, decline, or revival—that is, Baroque and Mannerist. Super-imposing their schemata over the course of later Chinese history, a post-Tang decline was to be followed by a final reincarnation of Chinese society and architecture with the emergence in one case of a nativist-led Republican period, or in the other case of a Japanese-liberated era—each announcing the dawn of a modern period.55

It should be noted that Liang Sicheng’s delineation of the stages of Vigor, Elegance, and Rigidity in his Pictorial History, which he wrote in English for a Western audi-ence, were not similarly conveyed in his Chinese-language survey, Zhongguo jian zhu shi, in which periodization followed a more traditional division of Chinese history by dynastic periods.56 While his invention of a Chinese Order, with its suggested cor-respondence to the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, may have been a didactic device seeking to provide familiarity for a Western audience, what Liang was actually doing was deconstructing the image of traditional Chinese architecture and reconstruct-ing it for modern Western eyes. For Liang, Chinese architectural history served as a bridge to the development of a new Chinese modern architectural style that incor-porated the essence of a Chinese tradition that would ameliorate the utility and form

figure 5 Comparative analysis method used by Liang Sicheng. Diagram of Tang dynasty architectural details

figure 6 Liang Sicheng’s diagram of the Chinese “Order”

54 Itō Chūta 1931, 34–39; Itō Chūta 1941–1943.55 The zenith of Chinese architecture in the Tang, as seen by Liang and Itō, corresponds to Naitō’s representation of the Tang as the height of aristocratic rule.

56 A precursor to this tripartite scheme is found Lin Huiyin 1934, 10. Lin characterized the Tang as “vigorous” while describing the Song and later dynasties as periods of decline.

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of Western modernity. But we have to ask whether such a modernist agenda really allows us to understand how architecture was conceived and practiced in premodern China. What can the use of modernist methodologies, global contextualization, and extrapolative life-cycle models really tell us about the past? If our goal is to recon-struct Chinese architecture in the past, then these “modern” strategies clearly need careful reevaluation or, at least, strong qualification.

post–world war ii sino-marxist architectural history

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, architectural periodiza-tion was recast again, this time in a Sino-Marxist discourse that rejected Marx’s own model of Asiatic development, which precluded the emergence of a modern China until after Western intervention. Instead, Chinese scholars now adopted the Marx-ist model of European development, one that progressed through Primitive, Slave, Feudal, and Modern periods.57 It was argued that the “seeds of capitalism” in China had originated independently without Western interference and that colonial op-pression had only served to delay China’s natural evolution into a modern socialist- communist society.

This Sino-Marxist model of societal evolution became the framework for architec-tural periodization. In Liu Dunzhen’s (1897–1968) History of Ancient Chinese Architec-ture (Zhongguo gudai jianzhu shi ), drafted by 1966, architectural history was divided into Primitive Period (pre-2000 bce), Slave Society Period (up to 475 bce), and Feudal Period (up to the mid-19th century, when colonial domination served as a pre-

figure 7 Itō Chūta’s diagram comparing column and building proportions in Etruscan temples with Hōryūji, Nara

57 The early stages from Primitive to Slave societies actually owe more to Friedrich Engel’s interpretation of the anthro-pologist Lewis Morgan. See Jenner 1992, 13. Marx divided world history into four stages—Asiatic, ancient, feudal,

and bourgeois. The latter three stages applied to European societal development. See Spence 1990, 183–84. The two sets are combined in the Sino-Marxist reformulation.

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amble for the Modern era).58 Architectural periodization in this manner, however, is not descriptive but prescriptive. In other words, buildings are not viewed as integral objects with their own story to tell, but instead read as markers of class struggle in a progression from primitive to modern society. The danger in this method is demon-strated in archaeological reconstructions that fabricate a “palace” ( gongdian) typology that would apply to all palace halls in the Slave and Feudal periods—a span of time of almost four thousand years. For example, the remains of a Yangshao culture pit- dwelling (ca. 5000–3000 bce), assigned to the Primitive Period, have been recon-structed as a rustic vision of an egalitarian, classless society (fig. 8).59 In many ways, this artistic reconstruction parallels the search for utopic origins in Western archi-tectural scholarship, as manifested in the paradigm of the “primitive hut”—“Adam’s house in paradise.”60 Accordingly, such rustic reconstructions are always described, if small in size, as simple “houses” or “dwellings”; or, if larger, as “big houses” or “com-munal halls.” The designation “palace” is never used because of its inherent associa-tion with a stratified class society.

In contrast, a large architectural compound excavated at Erlitou (ca. 1900–1500 bce), Yanshi, Henan Province, and assigned to the Slave Period, has been speculatively reconstructed as a so-called palace of the Early Bronze Age.61 Here, it was reasoned, the labor-intensive construction of massive rammed-earth foundations indicated the use of slave or conscript labor. Therefore, these foundations were judged to represent

fig 8

figure 8 Reconstruction drawing of a Yangshao culture (ca. 5000–3000 bce) pit-dwelling near Luoyang, Henan Province

58 Liu Dunzhen 1980. A general characterization of Yang-shao culture as egalitarian may be overstated. According to Louisa G. Fitzgerald-Huber, the small number of grave goods found in Banpo burials indicates a “relative lack of rigid social stratification”; however, ceramic production and the discovery of large rectangular building remains suggest, respectively, trade specialization and a governing elite. See Fitzgerald-Huber 1999, 55–56.59 Yang Hongxun 1975, 52, 54.60 See Rykwert 1972. Rykwert also discusses Neolithic and

Shang period womblike houses in China (ibid., 172.) See also Vidler 1987, 7–21.61 See Thorp 1983, 22–26; Zhongguo Kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo Erlitou gongzuodui, 1974. Comparison of Palace no. 1 with the later discovered Palace no. 2 reveals two different plan types. If the plans reflect the function of the buildings, then it is possible that one of the two sites did not serve a palatial role. On Palace no. 2, see Zhongguo Shehui kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo Erlitou dui, 1983. See also Yang Hongxun 1987, 71–80.

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a Slave Period “palace” (Palace no. 1; fig. 9). This determination follows an ideolog-ical framework espousing a shift from the Primitive to the Feudal period. This ideo-logical prescription ignores that only perimeter column holes were found on the sur-face of the inner, raised rammed-earth platform. No traces for the locations of inner walls or supports are found within the column perimeter, and there is no indication as to the height of the building structure. Nevertheless, “archaeological” reconstruc-tion shows a double-eaved hipped-roof hall with a U-shaped series of walled rooms (fig. 10). The reconstruction relies on two passages in the “Record of Inspecting Pub-lic Works” (Kaogongji) section of the Rites of Zhou (Zhouli ),62 a text that itself was a Han dynasty reconstruction. The modern reconstruction of Palace no. 1 thus relies anachronistically on this text as evidence of a double-eaved hipped-roof building with a U-shaped series of inner rooms. Although the absence of archaeological evidence for interior walls or supports results in an 11.4- meter distance between front and back columns, a distance difficult to span without internal supports, modern “archaeolog-ical” restoration has supplied a double-eaved hipped-roof superstructure. It is just as likely that the perimeter column rows defined an unroofed enclosure, or supported some other roof design.

The roofed Palace no. 1 reconstruction has subsequently been used as the basis for other Bronze Age palace hall reconstructions—for instance, the Erligang Culture (ca. 1600–1400 bce) double-eaved Hall f1 at Panlongcheng, Hubei Province,63 and

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figure 9 Excavation site plan of Palace no. 1 compound, early Shang dynasty. Erlitou, Yanshi, Henan Province

62 See Yang Hongxun 1987, 78. The two passages in the “Kaogongji”: 1) “The ancestral-palace halls (chongwu) of the Yin [i.e., the Shang]…had four-ridged double-roofs” (Yin ren chongwu…si a chongwu); see Zhouli zhushu, juan 41: 928. At Palace no. 1, this is manifested in the reconstruc-tion of a double-eaved hipped roof. 2) The second passage beginning “Xia hou shi shishi” is ambiguous and almost impossible to translate; see Zhouli zhushu, juan 41: 927–28; Lin Yin 1972, 471, 473, 475. It purportedly describes royal

ancestral-palace halls of the Xia period, and modern recon-struction artists have interpreted it to mean a U-shaped series of inner rooms, the number and names of which were all prescribed.63 At Hall f1, because of the similar arrangement of column and outer paired post-holes as that found at Palace no. 1 at Erlitou, the site was also reconstructed as a double-eaved hipped-roof palace hall. Hubei sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2001, vol. 1: 629–49.

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the Western Zhou Hall f5 at Zhaochen, Shaanxi Province.64 These collective recon-structions have created the impression of a coherent Slave and Feudal period palace typology generally characterized by a raised foundation, south-facing main hall with double-eaved hipped roof, and a large ceremonial courtyard with surrounding galler-ies.65 Such a “palace” typology may satisfy the ideological prescription of Slave and Feudal period building, but it fails to describe the actual differences in architectural form and style. Consequently, the architectural reconstruction of the Erlitou hall rests heavily on its initial prescription as a palace. Equally strong arguments can be made from the excavated evidence that the compound was a temple, an open-air altar, or a ceremonial platform or that it fulfilled some other purpose. In truth, the excavators of Palace no. 1 qualified their use of the term “palace” to suggest only a resemblance of their imagined reconstructions to palace halls of later periods.66 The actual func-tion and purpose of each different excavated “palace” has yet to be determined.

This disjuncture between ideological prescription and architectural description is most evident in the Sino-Marxist reading of all Feudal Period buildings as sym-bols of ruling-class oppression. Thus, surviving edifices ranging in date from the Qin dynasty tomb of the First Emperor to the late Qing Forbidden City in Beijing were classified together as one monolithic style. In order to explain obvious changes in architectural form during this period of over two thousand years, contemporary na-tionalistic arguments are also sometimes incorporated. Drawing on Liang Sicheng’s and Itō Chūta’s earlier periodizations, Sino-Marxist scholars identified the Tang dy-nasty as the Golden Age of Feudal architecture. After the Tang, architectural refine-ment increased, until buildings became mere stage sets in lavish imperial and private gardens in late-imperial times. This stage marked the last gasp of feudalism and coin-cided with the increasing power of the common classes, and it demonstrated a “sur-vival of the fittest” leading to the emergence of a modern China and debates over a modern style.67

Besides nationalistic or ideological motivations, stylistic periodization is some-times influenced by external factors reflecting local economic concerns. An example

figure 10 Reconstruction model of Palace no. 1, early Shang dynasty. Erlitou, Yanshi, Henan Province

64 Because the site was identified as an early Western Zhou capital, Hall f5 has been reconstructed as a palace hall. Its reconstructed plan and double-eaved structure follow the Erlitou Palace no. 1 prototype. See Yang Hongxun 1981, 32, fig. 15–16.65 A similar issue is raised in Steinhardt 2004, 230–31,

about the resemblance between the idealized architec-tural reconstruction of a Western Zhou building site exca-vated at Fengchu village, Shaanxi, and palace halls in today’s Forbidden City.66 Chang 1977, 223–24.67 Rowe and Kuan 2002.

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is the excavated remains of the Tang dynasty Lindedian hall in the Daminggong pal-ace at Chang’an, Shaanxi.68 In the summer of 1984 newly poured concrete founda-tions for a Lindedian reconstruction were clearly visible when I visited (figs. 11, 12). It must be realized that such “archaeological” reconstructions, often commissioned to be built anew in steel and concrete, were intended equally as tourist attractions to subsidize regional income and to exhibit China’s glorious past, while at the same time warning against the perils of Feudal Period decadence. In this category we must also include the artistic reconstructions of the private gardens of Suzhou.69

fig 12

fig 11

figure 11 Reconstruction drawing of the Tang dynasty Lindedian hall, Daminggong, Chang’an, Shaanxi Province

figure 12 Concrete foundations for the reconstruction of Lindedian hall, Daminggong, Chang’an, Shaanxi Province

68 For the 1957–59 excavations and early reconstruction designs, see Zhongguo Kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo 1959. Further excavations were conducted in 1982–83. For other reconstructions, see Liu Zhiping and Fu Xinian 1963; Yang Hongxun 1986.

69 The whimsical nature of the gardens reconstructed at Suzhou has also been noted in a review of R. Stewart Johnston’s Scholar Gardens of China (Cambridge, 1991) by James C. Y. Watt (Watt 1993, 441–42).

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figure 13 Modern rebuilding of Yellow Crane Tower, 1981. Wuhan, Hubei Province

new approaches for periodization

These modernist agendas in twentieth-century constructions of Chinese architectural history might seem to confirm Edward Said’s observation that “Orientalism re-sponded more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object.” Said goes on to note that there has never been “such a thing as a pure, or unconditional, Ori-ent;…much less something so innocent as an ‘idea’ of the Orient.” The same could be said of an “idea” of Chinese architecture.70 At this point I would like to consider what might have been the idea or conception of architecture in premodern China, which may lead us to new strategies for architectural periodization. New insights into Chi-nese architecture may be gained from using different approaches, including regional studies, urbanism, attention to building rituals, and the historical conception of ar-chitecture in China. The move away from the traditional scholarly reliance on textual evidence to a “scientific” or analytic inclusion of material and visual documentation, as represented by the work of Liang Sicheng, corresponded with the emergence of architecture as a profession and an academic field in China. In the past, however, the building profession and buildings themselves were conceived in very different terms.

Cultural perceptions of architecture as gleaned from poems, building memori-als, and other sources can tell us much about traditional Chinese attitudes toward building. In Klaas Ruitenbeek’s masterful Carpentry and Building in Late Imperial China, the Chinese attitude toward building is divided into “technical” and “non-technical” aspects.71 The “technical” component—the substantial or material side of

70 Said 1979, 22, 23. 71 Ruitenbeek 1993, 4–5.

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building—has been overemphasized by modern architectural historians, who have focused on questions of visual style, construction, decoration, and even modern no-tions of corporeal space.72 What are easily overlooked are the insubstantial or non-technical aspects. Too often dismissed as mere superstition, along with geomancy and building magic, such “non-technical” practices should be reevaluated in terms of rituals that lead to changes in architectural form and function. In China, the spiri-tual acts of building and dwelling are accompanied at almost every step by sacrificial rites and esoteric ceremonies. Additionally, since different sets of deities were felt to permeate various parts of buildings, design was correspondingly affected. For exam-ple, in many crowded urban areas, the retention of the house courtyard has more to do with ritual concerns than with functional necessity.73 Building rites and ceremo-nies, which differed with time and location, may offer clues for periodizing Chinese architecture.

Another way to understand how the “idea” of architecture may have been per-ceived in China’s past revolves around the concept of the “word” (wen) as “ embodied image” (tixiang ). I have written elsewhere about this concept and its relationship to early Chinese calligraphy and architecture.74 In short, in China the imperishability (buxiu) of words predominates over physical durability.75 An edifice’s enduring name links it forever with persons, places, or events, whereas its built reality is only tem-poral. An example is the well-known Yellow Crane Tower (Huanghelou) at Wuchang (Wuhan, Hubei Province), which was immortalized in poetry. Repeatedly rebuilt, the Qing dynasty tower was destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64). Although

figure 14 Drawing of the fictional Daguanyuan garden described in the 18th-century novel The Story of the Stone

72 On the emergence of the notion of Western architectural “space” as traced in methods of architectural representa-tion, see Lotz 1977, 1–65 passim.

73 See Liu 1994, 28–36.74 See Liu 1997; Liu 2000; Liu 2005; Liu 1999a.75 See Liu 1997, 1–2, 269–81.

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the tower is today reincarnated in steel and concrete (fig. 13), it is still felt to be orig-inal because the memory of its name is authenticated in “words.”76

An extreme instance of the imperishable power of wen is epitomized by the Daguan yuan garden described in the eighteenth-century novel The Story of the Stone (Shitou ji ) (fig. 14). This fictional garden has become in the popular imagination one of the most famous architectural sites in modern China, and has even been given physical form in both Beijing and Shanghai. In the novel, the garden’s actual con-struction receives only passing notice, while attention instead focuses on the act of naming the scenic spots and buildings in the garden sanctuary.77 This bestowal of “words” embodies an aesthetic of spontaneity. As important as the first note in music or the first brushstroke in calligraphy and painting, in architecture it is the moment of naming that confers on a building its imperishable mark of authenticity. The ap-pearance and application of this power of the “word” in relation to Chinese architec-tural aesthetics may also eventually suggest a way to periodize architectural history. More importantly, this concept of architecture as embodied image underscores the inadequacy of analyzing Chinese architecture solely according to traditional Western methods, such as the Vitruvian categories of venutas, commoditas, and firmitas—the modernist formula of “form, function, and structure.” Such methods and categories can be a useful tool for the analysis of Chinese buildings, but it cannot fully capture the way architecture has been described or conceived in China.

In conclusion, the twentieth-century periodizations of Chinese architecture according to nationalistic, ideological, ritual, and entrepreneurial interests derived

fig 14

fig 13

figure 15 Wenyuange imperial library hall, 1776. Forbidden City, Beijing

76 On the Huanghelou, see Ferguson 1943; Sun Zongwen 1957, 49–51; Fan Qinnian 1980. See also Liu 2005, 142, fig. 6.3.

77 Cao Xueqin 1973, chaps. 16–17.

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from modernist agendas. What is needed are conceptual frameworks better suited to China’s architectural heritage and its strong connection to both building rituals and embodied images. Nowhere can this relationship be better observed than in the Qing dynasty Wenyuange (Hall of Cultural Origins) imperial library hall in the Forbidden City, Beijing (fig. 15). As an imperial repository for words, the Wenyuange was built to house the primary set of the Comprehensive Library of the Four Treasuries (Siku quanshu), the largest book compilation ever produced in dynastic China. As such, the library epitomized the Chinese concept of an architectural monument.78 Its name—ritually bestowed by the emperor and inscribed in the emperor’s calligraphy—authenticates the building in a way that obdurate stone fails. In like manner, the ephemeral yet im-mortal character of the “Precious Jade” (Baoyu; fig. 16) in The Story of the Stone is remembered not for his adamant nature, but for his imperishable words. Both have stories to tell, and they find their authenticity in “words” as “embodied images.”

figure 16 Gai Qi (1774–1829). Drawing of the fictional character “Precious Jade” (Baoyu) in the 18th-century novel The Story of the Stone

fig 16

fig 15

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78 See Liu 1997; Liu 1999b, 104–113.

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