Liang Sicheng and Liu Dunzhen: The Twin Stars of Chinese Architectural History

In March 1957, Liang Sicheng stood before St. Michael’s Church in Beijing’s Dongjiaominxiang Lane, captured in a photograph by his assistant Fu Xinian during their survey of the city’s century-old architecture. This moment immortalized one of China’s greatest architectural minds at work—a man who, alongside his colleague Liu Dunzhen, would come to be celebrated as one of the Twin Stars of Chinese architectural preservation.

The Formative Years: Two Masters, One Mission

When Fu Xnian completed his college applications in 1951, all seven choices were for architecture programs—with Tsinghua University as his first choice and Nanjing Institute of Technology (now Southeast University) as his second. His reasoning was simple: Tsinghua had Liang Sicheng, and Southeast had Liu Dunzhen.

Wang Shiren, Fu’s classmate and future director of Beijing Ancient Architecture Research Institute, later reflected: “Liang and Liu were true masters—twin stars in the constellation of Chinese architectural culture. We who studied under them privately compared them to Li Bai and Du Fu: one inclined toward romanticism, the other toward solemn depth.”

The China Architecture Study Society: Foundation of a Discipline

As Wang explained to China News Weekly, the China Architecture Study Society—where Liang headed the Design Department and Liu led the Documentation Department—represented the academic wellspring of Chinese architectural history research. The fierce criticism directed at the Society during the 1958 National Architectural Theory and History Symposium created an academic rupture that continues to influence the field’s trajectory today.

In 2007, upon publication of The Complete Works of Liu Dunzhen, Wang penned Master and Classic as a tribute to both mentors, who each died at age 71 during the Cultural Revolution. He quoted Li Shangyin’s poignant line: “This feeling might have become a memory to recall, but even then I was already at a loss.”

Documenting Beijing’s Architectural Heritage

In October 1956, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Civil Engineering Institute collaborated with Tsinghua’s Architecture Department to establish the Architectural History and Theory Research Office, with Liang as director. Recent graduates Fu Xinian and Wang Shiren transferred to this new center.

The research team comprised Liang’s first-generation disciples—veterans of the China Architecture Study Society including ancient architecture experts Liu Zhiping, Zhao Zhengzhi, and Mo Zongjiang, all Tsinghua professors.

In 1957, the office assigned research topics, with Liang taking “Chinese Architecture of the Past Century.” The Beijing survey began with Fu Xinian and Yu Lihong as assistants, joined by Wang Qiming, who had been Liang’s only doctoral student admitted that year.

One day in early March, Liang took his three assistants on a demonstration survey starting at the eastern end of Dongjiaominxiang. This area, designated as the Legation Quarter after the Boxer Protocol, contained embassies, banks, churches, hospitals, and schools from various nations—an ideal location for studying semi-colonial architecture.

Wang Qiming recalled Liang’s instruction: “Photograph building facades like you’re whitewashing them—capture every angle. You never know which photo might prove valuable.”

After walking the entire length of the lane, Liang treated them to Western food at the Western Returned Scholars Association, joking that this was the “opening ceremony” and he couldn’t afford to feed them regularly.

Over nearly a year, the team shot thousands of photographs and collected precious historical materials, including original drawings of the Supreme Court building and blueprints for Peking University’s women’s dormitory designed by Liang and his wife Lin Huiyin.

Meanwhile, Wang Shiren traveled with professors to Shanxi, Shandong, and Inner Mongolia for three-month surveys, often walking or riding donkeys in remote areas while eating coarse grains with local families.

Unlike Fu, who came from a scholarly family, Wang had purely technical training and began building his humanities foundation at the history office. Liang required them to master English, assigning ten 4,000-5,000 word articles to memorize. Wang enrolled in art history and general history courses at Peking University but constant travel prevented completion.

Political Winds Shift

The Anti-Rightist Campaign soon interrupted their work. Fu was labeled a rightist, and the history office was dissolved. Through Liang’s connections, the team transferred to the Architecture Science Research Institute under the Ministry of Construction in spring 1958, though research on Beijing’s century-old architecture ceased.

Zhejiang Folk Dwellings Survey

The new Architecture Theory and History Research Office merged Liang’s Tsinghua team with Liu’s Nanjing-based China Architecture Research Office. Liu remained in Nanjing continuing his decade-long study of Suzhou gardens, producing over a thousand drawings and twenty thousand photographs.

Liang’s new project focused on Qingdao’s century-old architecture, essentially continuing his previous research with Wang and Fu as assistants. In summer 1958, they arrived in Qingdao with Liang’s introduction letter and received mayoral support. Wang investigated German-style buildings while Fu documented Japanese-style structures, obtaining numerous photos and drawings.

That October, the Architecture Science Research Institute hosted the National Architectural Theory and History Symposium during the “Plant Red Flags, Pull Out White Flags” campaign. The meeting fiercely criticized the China Architecture Study Society’s methods as “emphasizing antiquity over modernity, studying antiquity for its own sake, and (divorced from politics).” Both Liang and Liu faced veiled mockery, and the Qingdao project was condemned as “putting lipstick on imperialism” and banned from publication.

The conference decided to compile three histories of architecture—ancient, modern, and “New China’s First Decade”—through “collective collaboration” for the National Day celebration. Another key resolution was investigating folk dwellings, shifting focus from palaces, temples, and tombs to common residences.

In summer 1961, the history office began surveying Zhejiang folk architecture with Wang Qiming leading the team. The group traveled throughout Zhejiang during difficult economic times, with Beijing colleagues sacrificing monthly food ration coupons to support them.

They focused on homes built by master craftsmen from the “Dongyang faction” and “Ningshao faction” in areas like Tonglu, Zhuji, Xiaoshan, and Dongyang where traditional architecture remained well-preserved. Most peasant homes, however, were dilapidated. Rather than photographing these “unflattering” conditions, they created hundreds of exquisite ink drawings—mostly by Fu—that idealized rural life.

After exhibitions in Hangzhou and Shanghai in 1963, Liu expressed concerns in letters: while perspective drawings solved three-dimensional visualization, they could subjectively beautify ugly, broken houses. Photographs remained essential for capturing true conditions.

At the 1964 International Scientific Symposium in Beijing—China’s first such event—Liang and Wang presented their Zhejiang Folk Dwellings research. When the translator struggled with technical terms during Wang’s defense, Liang stood and flawlessly interpreted her presentation into English, even expanding on her points. Afterward, he introduced her to historians Fan Wenlan and Mao Yisheng as his student—a moment Wang recalls as her life’s highlight.

After completing the Zhejiang survey, the team began researching Fujian dwellings in late 1963. Fu remembered the magnificent Hakka tulou earth buildings of eastern and western Fujian, which required no embellishment in drawings. Unfortunately, the Four Cleanups Movement halted the project in autumn 1964, and all Fujian materials were burned as “disinfection” during the Cultural Revolution.

The Zhejiang materials survived because they had been archived, finally publishing in the 1980s with added photographs showing the true conditions of 1960s rural architecture.

The Eight Revisions: Crafting Chinese Architectural History

In August 1959, the history office received a request from the Soviet Architecture Academy to contribute to the World Architecture History series. The team decided to “kill two birds with one stone” by creating both the Soviet submission and a domestic textbook.

Liu Dunzhen edited what would become the History of Ancient Chinese Architecture despite heavy responsibilities at Nanjing Institute of Technology, poor health, and his ongoing Suzhou gardens and Prince Zhuang’s Garden restoration projects. The manuscript underwent eight complete revisions.

Wang Shiren participated in drafts three through eight, remembering summer working sessions in Nanjing where Liu would share his best cigarettes and treat the young researchers to meals at Quyuan Restaurant.

The sixth draft, completed in April 1963, formed the basis of the final version. Former rightists Fu Xinian and Yang Naiji joined the effort, with Fu creating illustrations, verifying materials, and writing annotations. Wang noted that while rightists couldn’t write, Fu’s illustrations were “extremely beautiful” and his ability to reconstruct ancient buildings from literature was exceptional.

Under Liu’s guidance, Fu reconstructed important sites like the Linde Hall, Hanyuan Hall, Xuanwu Gate, and Chongxuan Gate of Tang Dynasty Daming Palace, creating restoration drawings. He also transformed Wang’s surveys of Song Dynasty carvings into modern aerial perspective drawings.

Liu praised Fu’s meticulous annotation work as “extremely satisfying and admirable,” providing specific guidance on historical sources. Dozens of letters exchanged between 1963-1964—often signed “Under the night lamp”—show Liu making hundreds of corrections with endless patience, lamenting that “proofreading is like sweeping fallen leaves—you can never finish.”

On June 17, 1964, Liu finally announced to Fu that the eighth draft was complete, only to write days later about three forgotten items needing inclusion. Soon after, he wrote again with new thoughts about Foguang Temple after reading Archaeology magazine, saying: “You advise me to set aside the architectural history, but I can’t. I think this random thinking is still beneficial.”

When Fu reported discovering Han Dynasty tomb tablets at Babaoshan, Liu excitedly requested immediate documentation for inclusion, noting: “I’m afraid of trouble with other matters, but this is an exception. I just hope readers can soon see new materials to broaden their knowledge and open their horizons.”

Ideological Struggles

The eighth draft faced approval difficulties primarily regarding how to express class viewpoint in architectural history.

Liang had suggested avoiding rigid use of “class struggle” terminology while ensuring readers unconsciously felt the class perspective. Liu initially attempted to demonstrate architectural class nature through description—palace layouts centered on royal courts, building hierarchy systems, and “poetic charm” reflecting scholar-officials’ lifestyle and sentiments.

Reviewers criticized the draft for lacking class viewpoint, “emphasizing antiquity over modernity,” offering insufficient criticism of ancient architecture, and over-praising specific examples while only generally criticizing in the introduction. They argued that Tang architecture’s majesty and Song architecture’s elegance represented only ruling class construction, not overall Chinese architectural style.

Liu made over two hundred revisions, primarily deleting adjectives and lowering the praise tone. For example, changing “palace gates generally adopt towering and magnificent forms” to “palace gates generally adopt massive forms,” and “reflecting scholar-officials’ life sentiments” to “reflecting scholar-officials’ pursuit of leisure and decadent pleasure.”

He added a passage affirming folk dwellings: “Although the layout of large building complexes like palaces and temples created many special techniques, besides wasting human and material resources, they brought disadvantages like rigidity, excessive size, and inconvenient transportation. Thus, medium and small residences—especially mountain dwellings—often used various economical and flexible plans. Here, it powerfully illustrates how architectural layout greatly differed according to class.”

Despite these changes, the manuscript still failed approval. On October 5, Liu wrote to Wang and Fu: “Some say Mr. Liu, at such an age, still stumbled and lost face. From a personal gain-loss perspective, I indeed lost face, but looking seriously at the task, face doesn’t matter… As for receiving criticism, that’s appropriate. I have no emotions about it.”

Wang Shiren later reflected that having “no emotions” about unfair criticism revealed profoundly suppressed feelings. Notably, Liu stamped this letter with his never-before-used “Servant Ox” seal.

Liu made another hundred-plus revisions but grew pessimistic about publication, suggesting they treat it as preserved material. Still he continued, noting: “Writing history is inherently difficult. When Mr. Fan Wenlan wrote General History of China, his first draft emphasized class nature and people said he was ‘too left’; later he emphasized historical nature and people said he was ‘too right.’ This is unavoidable in historical writing.” He recognized China needed an architectural history, so they had to feel their way forward, draft after draft.

On October 21, he finally suspended work, though days later he sent another twenty-plus corrections “to avoid forgetting.”

The Four Cleanups Movement had begun, targeting the history office as a focus. Research on ancient, modern, and contemporary architecture were all criticized as “feudal, bourgeois, revisionist black goods.”

By late 1964, the Nanjing office closed first. Liu hoped his team could remain in the field and contribute to the national ten-year science plan, with collected materials transferred to appropriate departments rather than becoming waste—his “small wish.”

By end of 1965, the Architecture Theory and History Research Office dissolved completely. A 130-person research institution scattered, its personnel assigned elsewhere.

“Personnel dispersed, materials sealed, books transferred—completely uprooted,” Wang summarized.

Cultural Revolution and Legacy

When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, Liu became Nanjing Institute of Technology’s primary target, criticized for “actively promoting feudal class decay and decadence under the guise of organizing national culture.” His health collapsed completely, and cancer was discovered during hospitalization.

His son Liu Xujie told China News Weekly: “Father was an introverted person who usually didn’t speak much, and afterward spoke even less. From his increased silence and profound gaze, I think he might have guessed his final outcome.”

Liu Dunzhen died on April 30, 1968. Liang Sicheng followed on January 9, 1972, after enduring criticism as a “bourgeois reactionary academic authority.”

After the history office dissolved, Wang Shiren was assigned to Guilin Planning Bureau Design Office. In 1979, he tested into the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Philosophy Institute Aesthetics Research Office as associate researcher alongside Li Zehou, later working at Beijing Cultural Relics Bureau until retirement as director of Beijing Ancient Architecture Research Institute.

Wang Qiming was assigned to Shaanxi Construction Engineering Bureau. In 1979, to care for her ill father, she transferred to Beijing Construction Engineering College through former superiors, working outside her graduate specialty until retirement as associate professor. She felt she had failed Liang’s teachings and expectations, achieving too little.

During the Cultural Revolution, Fu Xinian worked three years as a water supply technician before assignment to the State Construction Commission’s Seventh Engineering Bureau Fifth Engineering Company in Gansu’s Tianshui as technician.

In 1973, the Architecture Science Research Institute reestablished the history research office. In 1975, Director Yuan Jingshen reported to Construction Minister Gu Mu, enabling Fu’s return to history research.

After reform and opening, architectural history work regained normalcy. In 1991, the office became the Architecture History Research Institute, later reforming as an enterprise under China Construction Science & Technology Group’s China Architecture Design & Research Group.

Fu Xinian continues working at the Architecture History Research Institute today. Elected Chinese Academy of Engineering academician in 1994, he believes his career benefited enormously from studying directly under Liang and Liu, who guided his research direction and methodology while modeling scholarly attitude.

He finds consolation that reform and opening finally affirmed Liang and Liu’s tremendous academic achievements, increasingly recognized today.

In 1980, after editing by Fu and others, Liu’s History of Ancient Chinese Architecture finally published. Professor Guo Husheng, who had participated in the Nanjing editing, wrote: “The History of Ancient Chinese Architecture took seven years and eight complete revisions to complete. This book melds years of research, bringing architectural history to higher levels, while the master exhausted his final energy thereon—the hardships and difficulties within are beyond full description.”

He noted Liu’s innate love for ancient architecture and remarkable achievements using modern scientific methods to organize heritage, his substantial writing and rigorous scholarship commanding professional respect.

In 2001 and 2007, The Complete Works of Liang Sicheng and The Complete Works of Liu Dunzhen (each ten volumes) published respectively.

In 2007, after nearly 50 years sealed away, Liang’s “Beijing Century-Old Architecture” survey results finally published as Beijing Modern Architecture (since “century-old” was no longer accurate).

Over those fifty years—especially after the 1980s—cities transformed dramatically, many representative buildings disappeared, and people finally recognized these cultural treasures’ preciousness and the value of that early research.

Among the preserved materials is that photograph of Liang before St. Michael’s Church. Fu Xinian had been photographing the building when Liang happened by, so he captured the image. Liang admonished him afterward not to use public film for personal photos.

Despite the scolding, Fu remains grateful he preserved the only work photo of Liang from that period. The image of his teacher walking with cane, observing carefully above and below, joins those irreplaceable old buildings as precious historical memories that should never be forgotten.