preserving china: liang sicheng's survey photos from the 1930s and 1940s wei-cheng lin

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Preserving China: Liang Sicheng's Survey Photos from the 1930s and 1940sWei-Cheng Lin

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Visual Resources, Volume 27, Number 2, June 2011ISSN 0197–3762 © 2011 Taylor & Francis

Preserving China: Liang Sicheng’s Survey Photos from the 1930s and 1940s

Wei-Cheng Lin

Taylor and FrancisGVIR_A_568167.sgm10.1080/01973762.2011.568167Visual Resources0197-3762 (print)/1477-2809 (online)Article2011Taylor & [email protected] In an endeavor to write a history of traditional Chinese architecture during the 1930s–1940s,Liang Sicheng (1901–1972) employed photography as the primary method of visualdocumentation because of its alleged ability to represent reality objectively. This articlereexamines Liang’s survey photographs in light of the different interests in China’s culturalpast taken by the state and foreign powers. In particular, by comparing photographs taken byJapanese architectural historians, whose research in China informed and justified Japan’sintention to construct a Japan-centered Pan-Asianism, I argue that Liang’s images of ancientbuildings not only helped define China’s cultural heritage, but also evoked a nostalgic view ofthe past—a vision, to Liang, to be the only means of preserving China’s architectural traditionduring the most tumultuous years in modern China.

Keywords: Liang Sicheng (1901–1972); Sekino Tadashi (1868–1935); Cultural Relics;Cultural Property; Architectural Heritage; Survey Photographs; Architectural Drawings

As elsewhere in the world during the first half of the twentieth century, in China theuse of photography became increasingly critical for academic fieldwork, including theinvestigation of historical buildings conducted by the most important architecturalhistorian of his time, Liang Sicheng (1901–1972), during the 1930s and 1940s.1

Photography used in architectural surveys serves to facilitate, record, and documentthe investigation. Produced mechanically and chemically, photographs provide notjust convenient aides-mémoire but also objective records, regarded as truthful andfree of errors of the hand. The alleged photographic truth and objective vision wereparticularly meaningful in early twentieth-century China as both were emblems ofmodernity and bases of a scientific discipline. Scholars who have studied fieldworkphotos taken by Liang and his research team have emphasized the accuracy andempirical objectivity achieved in those photographs as characteristics that separateLiang’s scholarship from previous studies of Chinese architectural history.2 In thisarticle, however, I will argue for a second reading of Liang’s fieldwork photographs bytaking into account Liang’s ambition, as well as anxiety, in uncovering and document-ing the nation’s architectural legacy during the 1930s and 1940s. Since the late nine-teenth century, the Chinese and foreigners had developed competing views aboutChina’s ancient artifacts and buildings and their meanings and values in the modernworld. Photography, the latest recording device of modern technology, I will suggest,became a critical means to giving significance to China’s architectural heritage by

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turning physical buildings into images. By comparing Liang’s with other photographstaken around this period, I will propose that, more than offering scientific objectivity,Liang’s photographic imagery of traditional architecture evokes a nostalgic vision ofChina’s cultural past and a desire to preserve that vision in the era when “modernChina” was taking shape. As such, these photographs not only provide a new way ofseeing buildings but also imply a discursive context in which ancient architecture wasendowed with a deeper layer of cultural and historical meaning.Figure 1 Liang Sicheng, “Cross-Section Comparison between Structures of Hip and Hip-and-Gable Roof,” Qingshi yingzao zeli (Qing-style Building Regulations). Illustration in Liang Sicheng quanji (Complete Collection of Liang Sicheng) (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye, 2001), 6:101.

An architecture graduate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1927, LiangSicheng was among the first-generation Chinese architects who returned to Chinaafter receiving training overseas. Rather than making a living as a practicing architect,Liang chose to develop his career in researching and writing the history of Chinesearchitecture, first as a professor between 1928 and 1931 and later as Chief Researcherat the Beijing-based Institute for Research in Chinese Architecture (Zhongguo yingzaoxueshe) from 1931 through the 1940s.3 In the first few years, Liang’s research waspredominantly textual, evolving around studying and deciphering historical records,literary evidence, and building treatises, many of which had long since becomeobscure. This text-oriented method of research was the only approach to the traditionof architecture known to scholars in China prior to Liang’s undertakings. Working ina similar approach, Liang nonetheless did not limit his work to the compilation andinterpretation of literary documents. He made an effort to transmit and translatebuilding conventions of the past in accurate drawings with a visual language andconvention that recall Liang’s educational background in the West.4 For instance, inhis annotation of the official building treatise, Gongcheng zuofa (Building Methods),promulgated during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), Liang produced several illustra-tions to visualize the principles of traditional timber-frame architecture in a new wayof seeing and understanding, both scientifically and analytically (Figure 1).5 As if totake this new visual approach to architecture one step further, beginning in 1932 untilthe outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Liang, joined by other colleagues fromthe Institute, conducted extensive fieldwork throughout the country, photographingand documenting surviving buildings. Even during the war against Japanese invasion(1937–1945), the architectural survey was kept alive until 1945, when the Institute wasformally disbanded before the internal strife broke out between the Nationalists andCommunists. Liang’s survey photographs, all taken during this period, were to be usedfor research and publication by the Institute, which continued to be operational evenafter sites of ancient buildings were no longer accessible due to the war.6

Photography for Liang was foremost a reliable technology that provided visualdocumentation with a “third dimension.” Unlike more conventional architecturaldrawings and diagrams, photographs could supply a “reality effect,” seemingly allow-ing buildings to be revealed truthfully in pictures.7 Although they did not replacedrawings and diagrams, photographs helped enhance and explore the sense of objec-tivity in Liang’s visual analysis of building structures. Chinese traditional architecturewas largely built with a timber structure, whose essential characteristics, in Liang’swords, “consisted of a raised platform, forming the base for a structure with a timberpost-and-lintel skeleton, which in turn supports a pitched roof with overhangingeaves.”8 To Liang, the primary goal of the study of Chinese architecture was to recon-


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struct its history by exposing the main skeletal structure and examining its stylisticfeatures and changes over time. His use of diagrams, drawings, and photographs wasto visualize and articulate this particular aspect of the building tradition in ancientChina. Writing in 1944, Liang stated: “Thus the study of the Chinese building isprimarily a study of its anatomy. For this reason, the section drawings are much moreimportant than the elevations.”9 In his fieldwork reports, detailed diagrams wereproduced based on investigation in situ, typically to show the front and cross-sectionof a given building. Each diagram was prepared meticulously to indicate the positionand relation of each component in the overall organic assemblage of the timber-framestructure. While these diagrams are highly abstract, analytical, and two-dimensional,they are validated and substantiated by juxtaposed photographs as published in surveyreports.Figure 2 Liang Sicheng, Yingxian Pagoda, Fogong Monastery, Shanxi, China (dating to 1056). Illustrations in Liang Ssu-ch’eng, A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984): a) frontal section, 1934, p. 71; b) photograph, 1934, p. 69; c) watercolor rendering, 1935, p. 70.

The combination of photograph and architectural diagram lends Liang’s investi-gation an analytic and objectified quality and can be best observed in the example ofthe Wooden Pagoda of the Fogong Monastery, dating to 1056, located in Yingxian ofthe northern province, Shanxi. Still standing as the tallest wooden structure in theworld today, the Yingxian Pagoda, a five-story building on the exterior, is character-ized by four more interior, hidden mezzanine levels and fifty-six different bracketingstyles (or dougong in Chinese) throughout the building.10 To illustrate these character-istics in his survey report on the building, Liang made a drawing of the full-lengthfrontal cross-section of the pagoda (Figure 2a), like an “X-ray image,” exposing theunderlying timber structure of all nine levels, its complexity and clarity, to the

Figure 1 Liang Sicheng, “Cross-Section Comparison between Structures of Hip and Hip-and-Gable Roof,”Qingshi yingzao zeli (Qing-style Building Regulations). Illustration in Liang Sicheng quanji (Complete Collectionof Liang Sicheng) (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye, 2001), 6:101.


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scientific and disciplinary scrutiny of modern scholars.11 This penetrating and highlyanalytical vision was then given a more concrete and realistic presence with a photo-graph showing the same wooden pagoda (Figure 2b). The two images, together with awatercolor rendering (Figure 2c, which will be discussed later), were grouped next toeach other for publication.12 When seen in juxtaposition, indeed, the “photographicperspective” necessarily confers reality to the scientific analysis in diagram, thusmaking the abstract structure more experiential. Unlike the diagram, however, thephotograph mechanically reproduces the image of the pagoda at a moment that cannever be repeated again. Compared with the abstract structure in the diagram, forexample, the pagoda in the photograph—its aged and tilted profile and the reflectionin the pond—was shown more in a descriptive context. Moreover, as it will bediscussed throughout this paper, the vision evoked in Liang’s research was not the onlyway to represent and view the traditional architecture in China around the time of hisfieldwork.

Since the late nineteenth century, political upheaval and foreign incursions had leftthe majority of ancient sites, palatial complexes, and religious buildings unattended andunprotected from plundering and destruction. One result of this was periodic wavesof sell-off of ancient artifacts from China, spurring a growing enthusiasm for Chineseart in the West. Beginning in the 1910s and 1920s, many stone statues, originally partof architectural ornaments or religious images, began to be seen displayed on pedestalsin Western museums.13 It was not until the late 1920s that the Chinese governmentissued effective procedures to ban illegal transactions of the nation’s antiquities. In1930, one year before Liang Sicheng began his career at the Institute, a law was imple-mented and enforced to ensure the protection of cultural relics, including architecturalstructures.14

Figure 3 Langdon Warner visiting a Qing palatial complex outside the Forbidden City, 1931. Photograph with annotations: “brilliant green tiled roof” and “This building suggested for K.C.” Langdon Warner, 1930—1933, Box 6, Series II archival folder. William Rockhill Nelson Trust Office Files, Record Group 80/05. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives. Image courtesy of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.

Even then, however, Chinese antiquities were still being purchased and exportedthrough China’s market. Langdon Warner (1881–1955), the legendary and notoriousAmerican art expert in East Asia, reported from China in May 1931: “Without going

Figure 2 Liang Sicheng, Yingxian Pagoda, Fogong Monastery, Shanxi, China (dating to 1056). Illustrations inLiang Ssu-ch’eng, A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984): a) frontalsection, 1934, p. 71; b) photograph, 1934, p. 69; c) watercolor rendering, 1935, p. 70.



into details at present, I found the market crazy to sell and the exchange more in ourfavor than ever before in history. …The foreign dealers have agents living there all theyear round who grab all that comes to town—Japanese, German, French, English, andAmericans.”15 Warner, then a field fellow in Chinese art at the Fogg Art Museum, wasscouting out artworks in China on behalf of several American art museums. Photo-graphs of artifacts for possible purchase were taken and sent back to the trustees todemonstrate their artistic value. One such photo (Figure 3) shows Warner visiting aneighteenth-century palatial complex located in an area close to the Forbidden City.Although in disrepair, the structure was praised for its “extraordinarily beautiful andsimple proportions,” as well as excellent details such as the “brilliant green tiled roof,”a remark made by Warner on the margin of the photo.16 In many other images, West-erners dressed in suits and hats were prominently visible to indicate the scale of thestructure or building parts under consideration. Not all the photographed architectureended up in Western acquisitions, but many quality examples of traditional architec-ture had already been spirited out of China when Liang and his research crew arrivedto do fieldwork after 1931.Figure 4 Langdon Warner, A two-story facade of a palatial structure outside the Forbidden City, 1931. Photograph with annotations “Two storied building mentioned in letter” and “east front.” Langdon Warner, 1930—1933, Box 6, Series II archival folder. William Rockhill Nelson Trust Office Files, Record Group 80/05. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives. Image courtesy of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.

Although the legal actions undertaken by the Chinese government did not forvarious reasons slow down the illegal market, the legislation still marked a shiftingconception of antiquities in China as part of the nation’s cultural property. All ancientartifacts in China were now regarded as the nation’s unalienable material property andtangible expression of its culture. Warner and other interested Western collectors,however, held different opinions: many thought that much of China’s culturalproperty, such as artwork, antiquities, and buildings, belonged to the category of fineart, deserving to be safeguarded and exhibited in Western museums. Even if collectingand preserving them meant removal from their sites of origin, Warner insisted that hesaw little chance in the “collapsing country” to care for and appreciate its own cultural

Figure 3 Langdon Warner visiting a Qing palatial complex outside the Forbidden City, 1931. Photograph withannotations: “brilliant green tiled roof” and “This building suggested for K.C.” Langdon Warner, 1930—1933,Box 6, Series II archival folder. William Rockhill Nelson Trust Office Files, Record Group 80/05. Nelson-AtkinsMuseum of Art Archives. Image courtesy of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.


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and artistic treasures.17 The use of photographs, as seen in Figure 4 in the process ofsearching, acquiring, and salvaging China’s artifacts was instrumental. Through thecamera’s lens, China’s historical buildings were turned into marketable commodities,ready to be reframed and understood in a different context.

Warner’s justification and rhetoric were familiar ones, used since the arrival ofWestern imperialism in the last century when China was perceived as a miserable andbackward nation, though possessing an admirable cultural past.18 A comparable view-point, one that is more relevant to Liang’s survey photos, is from the rising Japaneseimperial presence in China. After defeating China in the first Sino-Japanese War in1895, Japan’s determination to colonize East Asia increased, materializing in bothterritorial expansion and cultural domination. The earliest architectural survey ofChina by Japanese scholars, for instance, was carried out in 1901, in the immediateaftermath of the so-called Boxer Rebellion at the Forbidden City in Beijing, when thecity was besieged by Japanese and other international troops. Led by Itō Chūta (1867–1960), who later became the leading Japanese scholar in Chinese architecture, aresearch team of four members investigated and photographed the palatial complex,structures, and decorations of this once glorious but now defunct Imperial City.Figure 5 Ogawa Kazuma, Panoramic view of the open court in front of the Taihe Gate inside the Forbidden City, 1901. Photographs from Shinkoku Pekin k j shashinch (Photo Collection of the Imperial City of Qing Beijing), illustrated in Qingdai Beijing huangcheng xiezhentie (Beijing: Xueyuan chubanshe, 2000), pl. 1.

The photographs were published in 1906 in one volume under the title The PhotoCollection of the Imperial City of Qing Beijing.19 At a time when entering the ImperialCity was still considered a transgression, the collection was exceptional visual docu-mentation of the palatial architecture.20 Beginning from the southern entrance,through the Forbidden City, and ending in the surrounding areas, the volumeprovides a photographic journey that brings the viewer on a visual tour alongside theJapanese scholars in their investigation of the Imperial City. As shown in Figure 5,

Figure 4 Langdon Warner, A two-story facade of a palatial structure outside the Forbidden City, 1931.Photograph with annotations “Two storied building mentioned in letter” and “east front.” Langdon Warner,1930—1933, Box 6, Series II archival folder. William Rockhill Nelson Trust Office Files, Record Group 80/05.Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives. Image courtesy of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives, KansasCity, Missouri.



passing through the gates, one enters the formerly forbidden area—decorative moat,ornamented bridges, vast court, and magnificent architecture—but the photographicpanorama only highlighted the emptiness of the unguarded palace. Although thesurveyors’ presence was kept to a minimum in the photographs in order to suggest anunmediated actuality, the surveying eye was manifestly present. The viewer is granteda superior position, being shown, one after another, exquisite building details, marblecarving, and royal emblems, associated exclusively with imperial authority as if “beingplaced right before the actual scene.”21 But like the stagnant waterway, weedy paths,and empty courtyards illustrated here, the architecture of the Forbidden City appearsin these photographs less as a powerful symbol of the imperial authority than as areminder of its past-ness.

During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, China’s series ofdefeats to the Western powers brought about a restructuring of the political order inAsia, which found its new power in Japan. But unlike Western imperialism, Japan’sexpansionist ambition was based on a rising pan-Asiatic ideology (or Ajia shugi inJapanese), which advocated for political and cultural leadership over a coalesced andrestructured Asia. China was a decaying nation that had become incapable of preserv-ing its own history, while Japan, sharing with China a great deal of the same culturalpast, felt the responsibility to “rescue” China’s heritage. During the first decades of thetwentieth century, this self-proclaimed role of protector gradually took shape in Japan,which also informed the works of Japanese scholars dispatched to China for variousfieldwork. In architecture, the most systematic and extensive investigation of China’sbuilding tradition can be seen in the work of another Japanese scholar, Sekino Tadashi(1868–1935).

Trained as a historian of Japanese architecture, Sekino was in charge of surveyingexisting historical temples and shrines in Japan for restoration and protection duringthe early 1900s. The goal of the official survey was not only to learn about the archi-tectural history of the nation but also to reinforce a sense of collective national iden-tity.22 Sekino was later sent to Korea when it became a colony of Japan in 1910,conducting archaeological excavations there on ancient tombs and sites.23 Around thesame period, Sekino also embarked on three different research trips to China beforehis major expedition of 1918, during which he visited major Buddhist sites, where hewould investigate surviving buildings and document their conditions. It was through

Figure 5 Ogawa Kazuma, Panoramic view of the open court in front of the Taihe Gate inside the ForbiddenCity, 1901. Photographs from Shinkoku Pekin kōjō shashinchō (Photo Collection of the Imperial City of QingBeijing), illustrated in Qingdai Beijing huangcheng xiezhentie (Beijing: Xueyuan chubanshe, 2000), pl. 1.


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fieldwork spanning ten or so years that Sekino observed the extent to which China’straditional architecture had been neglected, damaged, or destroyed. After his returnfrom another trip in 1918, Sekino described in an article titled “China’s CulturalRemnants and Their Preservation” the terrible state in which China’s cultural patri-mony had been left. He went on to urge the Japanese government to take necessarysteps to save and preserve the vanishing historical relics in China, for “all Asiancultures that are distinguished from the West should be now our responsibility as theJapanese Empire.”24 As such, to research and preserve China’s cultural heritage was todemonstrate Japan’s superiority, and field travels taken to neighboring countries a wayto extend Japan’s colonial authority and physically map out a new Asian cultural geog-raphy from a Japanese perspective.Figure 6 “Chuzu An (dating to 1125), Shaolin Monastery, Dengfeng, Henan [China].” Photograph. Illustration in Tokiwa Daij and Sekino Tadashi, Buddhist Monuments in China (Tokyo: Bukkyo shiseki kenkyukai, 1930), vol. 2, pl. 129.

Between 1925 and 1928, together with another Japanese scholar, Tokiwa Daijō(1870–1945), Sekino published the five-volume Buddhist Monuments in China, a textbased on his fieldwork that appeared first in Japanese and later in English.25 In thispublication, Sekino arranged his materials by geographical location instead of chronol-ogy as a way to emphasize the importance of seeing architecture as part of the site’shistory. In this context, surviving buildings were portrayed as observing and partici-pating in the passing of time; that is, they were perceived as the material remnants andtraces of the past (or koseki in Japanese), surviving into the present to bring about asense of history. For example, Figure 6 shows a small Buddha Hall, the Chuzu An (orthe Hall of the Founding Abbot) in the Shaolin Monastery, located at one of the mostvenerated sacred mountains since ancient times, Mount Song. In the photo, the struc-ture is shown at an angle with its depth aligned along the longitudinal axis of the largermonastic compound against Mount Song, which looms in the distance. Dating to 1125,

Figure 6 “Chuzu An (dating to 1125), Shaolin Monastery, Dengfeng, Henan [China].” Photograph. Illustrationin Tokiwa Daijō and Sekino Tadashi, Buddhist Monuments in China (Tokyo: Bukkyo shiseki kenkyukai, 1930),vol. 2, pl. 129.



it was then the oldest wooden structure known in China when Sekino visited. Itscolumns and walls were largely retained, but the broken eave lines and damaged roofcontrast bluntly to its general solid outlines. Seeing the ancient structure at the historicalsite, Sekino commented: “the building is thus worthy of special study and preservation… as the most precious specimen of architecture in the Orient and one of the mostvaluable historical remains. …It is, however, unfortunate that no one could preserveit from the ravages of time and its final demolition.”26 An old tree is seen in the photoawkwardly standing in the way of our view of the building, but its wrecked trunk seemsappropriately to echo the dilapidation of the equally aged building behind it.Figure 7 “Buddha Hall, Wannian Monastery, Tiantai, Zhejiang,” 1918. Photograph. Illustration in Tokiwa Daij and Sekino Tadashi, Buddhist Monuments in China (Tokyo: Bukkyo shiseki kenkyukai, 1930), vol. 4, pl. 69, no. 1.Figure 8 “Fading Pagoda (ca. sixth century), Changqing, Shandong,” with Sekino Tadashi. Photograph. Illustration in Tokiwa Daij and Sekino Tadashi, Buddhist Monuments in China (Tokyo: Bukkyo shiseki kenkyukai, 1930), vol. 1, pl. 95, no. 2.

As historical buildings in Sekino’s photographs appeared dilapidated and indanger of soon disappearing, the nation itself was portrayed as equally old and beyondrepair. Several photographs in Sekino’s publication include the local people standingnext to their buildings (Figure 7). The natives seen in the pictures, like their buildings,look similarly in need of salvage, especially compared with the Japanese scholar’s ownimage repeatedly seen in the several of his photos. At several historical sites, Sekinoposed frontally before the building, and his formal attire distinguished him from thelocals, asserting his presence as well as that of Japan and its power (Figure 8). All thisseems to suggest that it was now in the interest of the Japanese empire to ensure andprovide the protection of China, of its history, and of its architectural patrimony.

Indeed, China’s historical architecture was a point of contention for those whotook interest in shaping the nation’s cultural heritage when Liang Sicheng began hisresearch in the early 1930s: the Chinese government, Western collectors and dealers,and Japanese historians of Chinese architecture among others. It is beyond questionthat Liang knew about all these endeavors when he set out on his own field trips. In

Figure 7 “Buddha Hall, Wannian Monastery, Tiantai, Zhejiang,” 1918. Photograph. Illustration in TokiwaDaijō and Sekino Tadashi, Buddhist Monuments in China (Tokyo: Bukkyo shiseki kenkyukai, 1930), vol. 4, pl.69, no. 1.


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particular, he was familiar with the research and fieldwork by Japanese scholarsthrough their publications, especially those documented in Sekino’s Buddhist Monu-ments in China. Liang’s field travels overlapped a great deal with Sekino’s, and Liangalso stressed the context of the cultural geography in which architecture was to beinvestigated.27 But the difference and even conflict between their purposes and inten-tions are also clear: if Sekino demonstrates Japan’s supposed cultural superiority bymapping China and its cultural legacy into the Japanese imperialist periphery, Liangrecovers China’s territory by rediscovering China’s own cultural and architecturalheritage in terms very different from Sekino’s.Figure 9 Liang Sicheng working in Main Hall, Foguang Monastery (dated 857), Wutai, Shanxi, China, 1936. Photograph. Illustration in Liang Ssu-ch’eng, A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984), 46, pl. 24d.

For example, to Liang Sicheng and his colleagues, Chinese traditional buildingswere not just material remnants of the past surviving into the present, but ratherimportant cultural relics or objects (or wenwu in Chinese), whose meaning could berenewed and redefined in the present.28 In this view, there is an awareness of thehistorical continuum and a consciousness that China had to grapple with its past inorder to move forward. Liang’s survey photographs also include people, mostly show-ing him and his fieldwork team working on traditional buildings (Figures 9, 11b). Thiswas meant to do more than authenticate the truthfulness of the on-site research andto underline empirical research as a way to bring the tradition into modern China. Theemphasis was not on the past-ness of the historical architecture, but on the physicalencounter with the surviving architecture during the investigation (for example,

Figure 8 “Fading Pagoda (ca. sixth century), Changqing, Shandong,” with Sekino Tadashi. Photograph.Illustration in Tokiwa Daijō and Sekino Tadashi, Buddhist Monuments in China (Tokyo: Bukkyo shisekikenkyukai, 1930), vol. 1, pl. 95, no. 2.



climbing, measuring, cleaning, photographing, and so forth) and the effort with whichthe old buildings could be preserved and their meaning created anew in the moderncontext. Through photography, the quintessential modern visual technology, theancient architecture seemed able to transcend its physical condition and material pres-ence, generating a profound sense and image of tradition and belonging.Figure 10 Liang Sicheng, Taihe Dian (Hall of Supreme Harmony, dated 1697), Forbidden City, Beijing, China, marble terraces, 1935. Photograph. Illustration in Liang Ssu-ch’eng, A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984), 115, pl. 58b.

In fact, the collective work of the Institute led by Liang Sicheng during the 1930swas itself a project of Chinese modernism in its reconfiguring of the relation betweenarchitectural form and its referent (both the content and meaning). And this wasachieved more than any other means by visual representation. During the periodbetween 1934 and 1937, Liang and the Institute were entrusted by the central govern-ment in Nanjing with a thorough investigation of the Forbidden City in the oldBeijing.29 The city of Beijing was then no longer the capital, and the former palatialcomplex had already been reappropriated into a historical museum. In the photo-graphs, however, the palatial buildings were presented elegantly and assertively,regaining their majestic atmosphere (Figure 10). But this was accomplished not somuch because of their relation to the former imperial authority but rather because ofthe abstract building form articulated in the photographic effect. With an explicit

Figure 9 Liang Sicheng working in Main Hall, Foguang Monastery (dated 857), Wutai, Shanxi, China, 1936.Photograph. Illustration in Liang Ssu-ch’eng, A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MITPress, 1984), 46, pl. 24d.


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picturesque quality, these images turn the disused palatial complex into an architec-ture of appreciation: in Liang’s mind, an art, an expression, and a cultural heritage.30

On the other hand, working during the 1930s and 1940s, Liang must have felt asense of urgency, knowing that his survey of traditional architecture was competingwith the destruction of ancient buildings. Writing in 1946, he stated: “the destructionbrought about by the war of Japanese aggression is still unknown. It should be nosurprise to find that many monuments … will hereafter be known only by thesephotographs and drawings.”31 Yet as Susan Sontag reminds us, “A photograph is botha pseudo-presence and a token of absence.” Liang’s photos recall the presence of thesurviving buildings as much as their possible disappearance. 32 In the reports of severalhistorical buildings, in addition to photographic images and architectural drawings,Liang also made watercolor renderings to suggest what the buildings would havelooked like in their original state. “Rendering” was a typical method of modeling anarchitectural drawing that Liang must have learned during his formal training at theUniversity of Pennsylvania. It was meant to give the building the aspect of a thirddimension, wherein the building form and details could be delineated in light andshade.33 Liang’s watercolor renderings of traditional architecture were different. In theexample of the Yingxian Pagoda (Figure 2c), the towering wooden structure isportrayed in perfect balance and symmetry, bathed in gradations of light and shadethat highlight not only the details but also several proportionally drawn figures dressedin period costume. Although an architectural drawing, it provides an imaginary visionthat brings the building back to its perfection. In juxtaposition, the tilted profile set offby the inverted water reflection in the foreground and the photographic image of thepagoda (Figure 2b) taken during the time of its possible destruction promotesnostalgia and memory.

Figure 10 Liang Sicheng, Taihe Dian (Hall of Supreme Harmony, dated 1697), Forbidden City, Beijing,China, marble terraces, 1935. Photograph. Illustration in Liang Ssu-ch’eng, A Pictorial History of ChineseArchitecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984), 115, pl. 58b.



Through photography, architecture becomes much more accessible, not as athree-dimensional building, but a two-dimensional image. It is thus reductive, turninga material reality into an image, but it is also additive, providing a perspective andconstructing additional layers of meanings.34 It is in this respect that Liang’s architec-tural survey can be examined as one of the attempts around the 1930s to shape themeaning of Chinese architectural tradition and heritage in photography. This is not todeny that the scientific, objective approach deployed by Liang Sicheng and hiscolleagues transformed the study of traditional Chinese architecture into a moderndiscipline. When considering the historical moment and circumstance in which hissurvey photographs were produced, compared, and understood, however, one beginsto see a more subjective, tangible, and sentimental reading of the same photographs.In fact, I would argue that both objectivity and nostalgia revealed in the photographicimage of traditional architecture were important and meaningful in the context ofmodern China, concerning both its past and its encounter with the modern world. Inthis regard, I suggest that critical concepts discussed in this paper, such as culturalproperty, heritage, and patrimony in China’s modernity, were apprehended not onlyin discourse but also necessarily, through the mediation of photography.Figure 11a “Huichong Pagoda (dated 627-649), Changqing, Shandong,” from Tokiwa and Sekino, Buddhist Monuments in China, vol. 1, pl. 95, no. 1.Figure 11b Liang Sicheng, Huichong Pagoda, 1936. Photograph. Illustration in Liang Ssu-ch’eng, A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984), 128, pl. 64b.Figure 11c Liang Sicheng, Pencil sketch of the Huichong Pagoda, 1936. Illustration in Liang Sicheng quanji (Complete Collection of Liang Sicheng) (Beijing: Zhongguo gongye, 2001), 9:93.

Figure 11a is Sekino’s photograph showing an early seventh-century pagoda withextensive damage to the upper structure behind wild bushes. Compared with the agedand dilapidated image taken by Sekino, Liang’s photograph in Figure 11b appearsmore descriptive of this building on location without commentary. It shows the struc-ture in a three-quarter view, indicating much more clearly the scale, form, and detailsof the structure. A colleague of the Institute investigating the structure at one of thedoorways is included in the photograph, which further contrasts with Sekino’s image,in which he is seen to the left of the pagoda, partially cut off from the picture. Later in

Figure 11a “Huichong Pagoda(dated 627-649), Changqing,Shandong,” from Tokiwa andSekino, Buddhist Monuments inChina, vol. 1, pl. 95, no. 1.

Figure 11b Liang Sicheng,Huichong Pagoda, 1936. Pho-tograph. Illustration in LiangSsu-ch’eng, A Pictorial Historyof Chinese Architecture (Cam-bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984),128, pl. 64b.

Figure 11c Liang Sicheng, Pencilsketch of the Huichong Pagoda, 1936.Illustration in Liang Sicheng quanji(Complete Collection of Liang Sicheng)(Beijing: Zhongguo gongye, 2001), 9:93.


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1936, Liang made a pencil sketch after his photo of the pagoda, including the colleagueworking in situ (Figure 11c). Although not intended for publication, it nonethelesssuggests a personal reflection on the meaning of the pagoda as filtered throughphotography.35 From the photograph to Liang’s own pencil sketch, we seem to followhim in exploring the multilayered meaning of the ancient building in its visual repre-sentation. To Liang, the photograph thus not only mediated, but also helped onemeditate on and remember China’s traditional architecture—its legacy and signifi-cance as cultural relic that could be preserved in modern China perhaps only throughphotography.

WEI-CHENG LIN is assistant professor of Chinese art history in the Department of Art atthe University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received a PhD in art history from theUniversity of Chicago. He has published on Chinese Buddhist art, mortuary art, and thehistory of collecting Chinese art and artifacts outside China. His current book projectinvestigates the history of Buddhist monastic architecture as built in relation to the sacredmountain cult in medieval China.

1 During the 1920s through 1940s in China, photography was most notably used in thefield research of archaeology and ethnography, in addition to architecture. However,not until recent years have scholars begun to pay attention to the fieldwork photos asrelated to the process of China’s modernization and critical issues such as the culturalidentity that emerged from it. For example, ethnographic photographs were discussedin several papers presented at a recent conference, “The Role of Photography in Shap-ing China’s Image, 1860–1937,” at Northwestern University in April 2009. AboutLiang Sicheng (also spelled Liang Ssu-ch’eng), the most comprehensive discussion inEnglish is still Wilma Fairbank’s Liang and Lin: Partners in Exploring China’s Architec-tural Past (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).

2 For an example, see Li Shiqiao, “Writing a Modern Chinese Architectural History:Liang Sicheng and Liang Qichao,” Journal of Architectural Education 56 (2000): 37–38

3 The Society (later Institute) for Research in Chinese Architecture was founded in 1925by Zhu Qiqian (1872–1964), a bureaucratic erudite and an architectural dilettante, forpromoting studies of traditional Chinese architecture. The Society was renamed Insti-tute in 1929 when it received funding from war indemnity money paid through theUnited States government to support Chinese studies. With the funding, the Institutealso published Zhongguo yingzao xueshe huikan, or Bulletin of the Society for Researchof Chinese Architecture, from 1930 through 1937, and 1944 and 1945 after years ofinterruption by the war against Japan. Most of Liang’s fieldwork reports, includingphotographs, were first published in the Bulletin.

4 A full discussion of the visual language and convention used in Liang’s illustrations incontrast to previous scholarship in China will take us too far afield, but Liang’s Westerntraining as seen in the split elevation/section drawing at the bottom of Figure 1 becomesobvious when compared with other works by Liang’s contemporaries. For an example,see Yue Jiazhao, Zhongguo jianzhu shi [History of Chinese Architecture] (Hangxian:s.n., 1933). Photographs, on the other hand, were not used by Chinese architecturalscholars prior to Liang’s research in the 1930s. The earliest photographs of Chinesearchitecture in scholarly publications were mostly taken or commissioned by Westernscholars, such as S. W. Bushell, who included nineteen photographs in the chapter onarchitecture in his Chinese Art, 2 vols. (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1924).



5 The full name of the treatise was Qing gongbu gongcheng zuofa [Building Methods(issued by) the Department of Work of the Qing (Dynasty)], first printed in 1734. SeeLiang Sicheng, Qingshi yingzao zeli [Qing-style Building Regulations] (completed in1932) 1st ed. 1934, reprinted in Liang Sicheng quanji [Complete Collection of LiangSicheng] (Beijing: Zhongguo gongye, 2001), vol. 6.

6 Thousands of survey photographs taken by Liang and his colleagues at the Instituteduring the 1930s and 1940s are now collected in the Department of Architecture ofTsinghua University in Beijing, the architectural program founded by Liang himselfin 1946, after the Institute was formally disbanded. Most photographs in thecollection are now available in thumbnail at the website: http://166.111.120.55:8001/Navigation/NavigationByPhoto.htm/.

7 Although Liang never elaborated on the intent and purpose of using photography inhis research and writing, it can be inferred based on his publications from this periodthat by providing examples of actual buildings, photographs were employed tocomplement and substantiate principles and particular details illustrated in the rela-tively abstract diagrams and drawings. For an example, see Liang Sicheng, ed., Jianzhusheji chankao tuji [Pictorial References for Architectural Design], 10 vols. (Beiping:Zhongguo janzhu yingzao xueshe, 1935–1937).

8 Liang Ssu-ch’eng, A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture, ed. Wilma Fairbank(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984), 8. The draft in English, with its illustrationsand photographs, was completed in 1946, but it was published posthumouslydue to political and personal circumstances in China. For details of the publica-tion, see Fairbank’s “Liang Ssu-ch’eng: A Profile,” in the preface of the book,xiii–xix.

9 Liang Ssu-ch’eng, A Pictorial History, 3.10 Dougong literally means “caps [and] brackets,” referring to a peculiar part—blocks,

brackets, and beams—of a timber-frame structure that joins posts and the roofingstructure. Throughout the history of Chinese timber-frame architecture, the elabora-tion of the bracketing style has been one of the most important indexes for the devel-opment of the building technology. For a useful and brief explanation, see LotharLedderose, Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art (Princ-eton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 107–11.

11 In an article of 1932, Liang described the timber-frame structure of a traditionalChinese wooden building as a manmade structure that could be read as clearly andlogically as an organic skeleton shown in an X-ray-produced radiogram; see LiangSicheng, “Baodixian Guangjisi sandashi dian” [Hall of three great bodhisattva atGuangji Monastery in Baodi County], Zhongguo yingzao xueshe huikan 3, no. 4(December 1932): 24.

12 All three images, Figures 2a–c, were prepared in 1934 and 1935, initially for an articleby Liang, titled “Wooden Buddhist Pagoda Built during the Liao Dynasty in FogongTemple of Ying County in Shanxi Province,” due to be printed in 1937. The article,however, was never published because of the Sino-Japanese War that broke out in thesame year. The three images without the article were later reproduced in three consec-utive plates in Liang’s A Pictorial History, 69–71. The 1937 article was recently reeditedand published as vol. 10 of the Liang Sicheng quanji (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhugongye, 2007).

13 An excellent discussion of the early history and reception of Chinese sculpture collec-tion in the United States is Stanley K. Abe’s “From Stone to Sculpture: The Alchemyof the Modern,” in Treasures Rediscovered: Chinese Stone Sculpture from the Sackler


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Collections at Columbia University (New York: Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery,2008), 7–15.

14 It is called the Law for the Protection of Ancient Objects (Guwu baocun fa), issued inJune 1930. It was the earliest law passed in China to define China’s antiquities andtheir transactions.

15 Correspondence by Langdon Warner, May 1931, from the archive folder: LangdonWarner, 1930–1933, Box 6, Series II. William Rockhill Nelson Trust Office Files,Record Group 80/05. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives. Kansas City, Missouri.On Warner, see Langdon Warner through His Letters, ed. Theodore Bowie (Blooming-ton: Indiana University Press, 1966).

16 Warner, 1930–1933, Box 6, Series II, Record Group 80/05, Nelson-Atkins Museum ofArt Archives.

17 Warner’s negative perception of China as a country in decline is elaborated in WarrenI. Cohen, East Asian Art and American Culture (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1992), 77ff.

18 See Catherine Pagani, “Chinese Material Culture and British Perceptions of China inMid-Nineteenth Century,” in Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn, eds., Colonialism and theObject: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum (London: Routledge, 1998), 28–40.

19 Ogawa Kazuma, Shinkoku Pekin kōjō shashinchō, annotated by Itō Chūta (Tokyo:Ogawa Kazuma Shuppanbu, 1906); reprinted under the Chinese title, Qingdai Beijinghuangcheng xiezhentie (Beijing: Xueyuan chubanshe, 2000).

20 Although there were photographs of the Imperial City taken by Westernersbefore Itō’s investigation, none had been taken as systematically with so many closedetails and intimate views. For a useful discussion regarding the early photographsof Beijing, including the Forbidden City, see Nick Pearce, Photographs of Peking,China 1861–1980: An Inventory and Description of the Yetts Collection at the Univer-sity of Durham—Through Peking with a Camera (New York: Edwin Mellen Press,2005).

21 This was reported by Kuki Ryūichi (1852–1931), former director of the ImperialMuseum of Art in Japan, after seeing the photographs of the Forbidden City; see,Qingdai Beijing huangcheng xiezhentie, preface.

22 For a discussion on the consolidation of Japan’s cultural nationalism through restor-ing and protecting its historical sites and cultural relics during the late nineteenthcentury, see Christine M. E. Guth, “Kokuhō: From Dynastic to Artistic Treasure,”Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 9 (1996): 313–22.

23 Sekino’s research in Korea as part of Japan’s colonial project in that country isdiscussed in Hyung Il Pai, Constructing “Korean” Origins (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Asia Center, 2000), 23–56.

24 Sekino Tadashi, “Shina bunka no iseki to sono hozon,” first published in Daikan 7(1918), collected in Sekino Tadashi, Shina no kenchiku to geijutsu [China’s Architec-ture and Applied Art] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1938), 417–26.

25 Tokiwa Daijō and Sekino Tadashi, eds., Shina bukkyō shiseki, 5 vols. (Tokyo: BukkyōShiseki Kenkyūkai, 1925–1928). The same publication was also available in Englishunder the title, Buddhist Monuments in China, published by the same Japanesepublisher during 1925–1938, including five volumes of photographs and five volumesof texts.

26 Sekino and Tokiwa, Buddhist Monuments in China, Text Pt. II (Tokyo, 1930), 124.27 In Liang’s own words, “Since its foundation in 1929…[the Institute] has been

engaged in systematically searching the country for architectural specimens, studying



them from both the archaeological and geographical points of view.” (Liang, APictorial history, 4.)

28 The term, wenwu, was used especially during the 1930s onward for ancient artifactsthat possess particular cultural and historical significance to modern China, as distin-guished from guwu (lit. ancient object) or yiji (lit. leftover traces), both more straight-forwardly referring to past artifacts. That is, while wenwu articulates the modernmeaning of ancient artifacts, guwu or yiji emphasize more the past-ness of the sameobjects.

29 Lin Zhu, Jianzhushi: Liang Sicheng [Architect: Liang Sicheng] (Tianjin: Tianjin kexuejishu chubanshe, 1996), 61–62.

30 As Liang stated, “It was not until late in the twenties that Chinese intellectuals beganto realize… that architecture is something more than brick and timber: it is an art, anexpression of the people and their times, and a cultural heritage.” (Liang, A PictorialHistory, 36.)

31 Liang, A Pictorial History, 37.32 Susan Sontag, On Photography (1977; repr., New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

2001) 16.33 Architectural “rendering” as taught in the architectural school of Liang’s time at the

University of Pennsylvania is explicated in John F. Harbeson, The Study of Architec-tural Design (New York: Pencil Points Press, 1927), 55–67.

34 For a related discussion in terms of photographic images of architecture, see Kather-ine Fischer Taylor, “Architecture’s Place in Art History: Art or Adjunct?” Art Bulletin83, no. 2 (June 2001): 342–46.

35 Unlike the watercolor rendering discussed earlier, the pencil sketch was not intendedfor survey reports. It was actually not published until 2001 in Liang Sicheng quanji, 9:93. It faithfully reproduces the image of the pagoda in the photograph, but as Liangsigned his name at the lower right corner, the sketch seems to be more of a personalreflection and contemplation of the ancient pagoda rather than a scholarly inquiry ofits architectural significance.


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