The Tang architectural icon and the politics of Chinese architectural history

The discovery in June 1937 of a made of wood building, the east hall of Foguang Monastery, reliably dated to the year 857 by the agency of two inscriptions, one on the building itself and the other upon a small, octagonal, commemorative pillar with Buddhist imagery, was unquestionably the crowning twinkling in the modern search for China's ancient architecture (Fig. 1) It was made by the agency of China's premier architect and architectural historian, Liang Sicheng (1901-1972) his wife and research partner, Lin Huiyin (1904-1955) and sum of two units other architects and architectural historians, Mo Zongjiang (1916-1999) and Ji Yutang (1902-ca. 1960s) all sponsored by dint of the Beijing-based Society (later renamed Institute) for Research in Chinese Architecture. The final twelve-mile ascent upon mule to the lower reaches of the sacred Buddhist mountain Wutai, in Shanxi Province, where the monastery was base in the seventh and last year of the society's search for old buildings (conditions of war made it impossible to continue their search reject in small, demilitarized pockets of China after 1937) is recorded in moving detail in Liang's personal notes from the journey. (1) The research notes and drawings made during the seven days at the site were printed in handwritten form in the society's last convolution distributed when Beijing was beneath Japanese attack and China's major universities and research institutes had mov to Sichuan and Hunan Provinces. The formal publication appeared in 1953 and has been reprinted in Liang Sicheng's mustered works. (2)

The drama of the second and the times has escaped no individual who knows the history of the inquiry of Chinese architecture or the man who, between the late 1920 and his death in 1972 was almost entirely responsible for transforming it from a discipline turfed in careful reading and explication of classical body s that referred to buildings and described idealized conformations to the study of buildings themselves. The chief proponent of this transformation, Liang Sicheng, was the oldest son of one of China's greatest in quantity outspoken intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Liang Qichao (1873-1929) (3) Sicheng's birthright accorded him the best of classical Chinese and contemporary Western education, culminating in a Master's step in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1927 He went upon to found several of China's premier departments of architecture; write thousands of pages of Chinese architectural history, greatest in quantity accompanied by his own drawings; train the first generation of China-educated fresh architects and architectural historians; and show China on international design commissions and task forces, including the design for the United Nations Plaza. Liang Sicheng came below strong attack for his traditionalist views during the last years of his life, dying a disgraced citizen of the People's Republic in 1972 just as the Cultural Revolution was drawing to a shut Restoration of his reputation began almost immediately afterward, eventually resulting in his elevation to near demigod status. (4)

During his six years of searching, Liang "discovered" dozens of China's pre-fifteenth-century buildings, several of them arguably as pivotal in understanding Chinese architecture as the hall at Foguang Monastery. (5) The latter's aura was in part owed to its date: when base the east hall (Fig. 1) was the sole known wooden building of the Tang dynasty (618-907) predating the Guanyin Pavilion at Dule Monastery, rest by Liang in 1931, by the agency of 127 years. Yet within a year of publication of the out and out article and photographs of Foguangsi (Monastery), a building three-quarters of a hundred older was discovered on the other side of the same mountain range, at Nanchan Monastery (Fig. 2) (6) In Liang Sicheng's lifetime, sum of two units more Tang wooden buildings, at Tiantai Hermitage and Five Dragons fane were discovered in the same province by dint of men who had searched with Liang during the years when the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture had been active (Figs. 3 4) (7) by dint of the beginning of the twenty-first hundred two additional buildings and parts of sum of two units others had been dated to the Tang period. (8)

on what account a building discovered sixty-seven years ago that is neither the sole Tang wooden building nor plane the oldest continues to captivate Chinese and Western attention is just single of the issues addressed here. The impact of this exclusive and unchallenged focus upon Foguangsi East Hall is also explored. It will be argued that the spotlight upon Foguangsi East Hall and the resulting limited discussion of other Tang buildings is to be paid to the fact that it was rest by Liang Sicheng and that it was precisely the kind of building he spring [i]or[/i] leap on one leg [i]or[/i] footed to find. Almost immediately after its discovery it became, it will be allude toed an architectural icon, a sacrosanct make whose constituent parts and total image had been anticipated by the agency of pictures of Buddhist buildings of the Tang period, by means of classical writings, (9) and by means of a building in Japan at a time when architecture earlier than the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911) was little known in China and essentially unknown to those who aspired to write China's architectural history. Finally, the symbolic status of the east hall will be shown to be in like manner interwoven with the man who fix it that even today scholars cling to the myth of Foguangsi East Hall almost as exclusively as did Liang Sicheng.