The romantic pair, whose letters are suffused with a love of poetry and literature, returned most often to the province of Shanxi (“west of the mountains”). But the importance of their field trips goes beyond that: So many of the temples were later lost-during the war with Japan, the revolutionary civil war and the Communist attacks on tradition like the Cultural Revolution-that their photos and studies are now invaluable documents.” “They were the first to actually go out and find these ancient structures.
“Liang and Lin founded the entire field of Chinese historical architecture,” says Nancy Steinhardt, professor of East Asian art at the University of Pennsylvania. This article is a selection from the January/February issue of Smithsonian magazine Buy Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12 The breeze between them sighs, ‘Alas!’”) (“The blue of the sky / fell in love with the green of the earth. The beautiful Lin was already legendary for the romantic passions she had inspired, leaving a trail of lovelorn writers and philosophers, including the renowned Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, who once composed a poem in praise of her charms. Photographs show the pair scrambling among stone Buddhas and across tiled roofs, Liang Sicheng the gaunt, bespectacled and reserved aesthete, scion of an illustrious family of political reformers (on par with being a Roosevelt or Kennedy in the U.S.), Lin Huiyin the more extroverted and effervescent artist, often wearing daring white sailor slacks in the Western fashion. It was, Liang later wrote, “like a blind man riding a blind horse.”ĭespite the difficulties, the couple would go on to make a string of extraordinary discoveries in the 1930s, documenting almost 2,000 exquisitely carved temples, pagodas and monasteries that were on the verge of being lost forever. But with flamboyant bravado, Liang and Lin-along with a half dozen or so other young scholars in the grandly named Institute for Research in Chinese Architecture-used the only information available, following stray leads in ancient texts, chasing up rumors and clues found in cave murals, even, in one case, an old folkloric song. This was a radical idea in China, where scholars had always researched the past through manuscripts in the safety of their libraries, or at most, made unsystematic studies of the imperial palaces in Beijing. So on their return to Beijing, the cosmopolitan pair became pioneers of the discipline, espousing the Western idea that historic structures are best studied by firsthand observation on field trips. Overseas, they were made immediately aware of the dearth of studies on China’s rich architectural tradition. Born into aristocratic, progressive families, they had both studied at the University of Pennsylvania and other Ivy League schools in the United States, and had traveled widely in Europe. This prodigiously talented couple, who are now revered in much the same way as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Mexico, were part of a new generation of Western-educated thinkers who came of age in the 1920s. The two leaders of this small but dedicated group have taken on a mythic status in China today: the architect Liang Sicheng and his brilliant poet wife, Lin Huiyin. Within the remotest valleys of China lay exquisitely carved temples staffed by shaven-headed monks much as they had been for centuries, their roofs filled with bats, their candlelit corridors lined with dust-covered masterpieces.
But although these intellectuals traveled by mule cart, rickshaw or even on foot, their rewards were great. The semi-feudal countryside had become a dangerous and unpredictable place: Travelers venturing only a few miles from major cities had to brave muddy roads, lice-infested inns, dubious food and the risk of meeting bandits, rebels and warlord armies. At the time, there were no official records of historic structures that survived in the provinces. As the country teetered on the edge of war and revolution, a handful of obsessive scholars were making adventurous expeditions into the country’s vast rural hinterland, searching for the forgotten treasures of ancient Chinese architecture. Architectural preservation is rarely so thrilling as it was in 1930s China.
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