Chapter 12 9.Explore the relics

Not surprisingly, Zhu Qiqian failed to appreciate Liang Sicheng's suggestion of conducting fieldwork outside of Beijing.He established the Institute of Architecture to solve architectural problems with written methods (Note 1.). On the contrary, Liang Sicheng is a modern man of the twentieth century.His education embraces not only important Chinese traditions, but also Western science that insists on field observation and experimentation.And above all, he was born a man of action, a man of practicality.In his twenties, he designed and supervised the construction of houses in the Northeast.

On the other hand, he was unprepared for the hardships of going to the countryside.After he returned from Japan at the age of 11, he spent most of his time studying in Beijing or Tianjin, and his travels were only on the railway line connecting the two places.Even in the short few years in Shenyang, he also lived in the new campus on the edge of the city, and traveled on the railway line leading to Tianjin and Beijing. His urban origin was not unique, however.In China, since some modern institutions are located in the cities, the intellectual class who have received modern education also gather there.Modern enterprises, factories, hospitals and universities were established in cities along the eastern seaboard or inland along the river.Even in major cities, when Sicheng was young, public transportation was just crowded, unpunctual buses and sometimes trams, and rickshaws or sedan chairs pulled by coolies were the private cars and taxis of those days. car.Cycling is common when going out, and everyone walks.Living close to work or a friend's place alone is a bonus.

At that time the traditional gulf between the educated upper class and the poor peasantry was still wide, and it is true that the unemployed or half-employed poor peasants often sought menial employment in the cities and often brought their produce from the country to the market to sell, But reverse exchanges are rare.Intellectuals in the city who want to go to the countryside will not only be restricted by transportation, but will also encounter many other difficulties and even dangers.The small inns where the handlebars and passing traders live usually only have a heated kang, there are lice that infect diseases, and the toilets are full of maggots.The teahouses on the side of the road can serve delicious meals, but it is hard to say whether the dishes, chopsticks and tea are clean.In the 1920s and 1930s, the unsuspecting passer-by was in danger of being robbed by bandits.

Sicheng's first field trip in April 1932 was a pioneering work.It happened that Yang Tingbao, a good friend who introduced him to Shenyang, made this happen.According to Yang’s recollection, “Once I went to the Drum Tower in Beijing, which is used as a public library and mass education exhibition hall, I saw a strange-looking photo of a temple hanging on a wall under the huge dome on the first floor. The caption below the picture clearly says: 'Jixian Dule Temple'. When Xiang Sicheng described the shape of the bucket arch in the photo, he was very excited and said that I was very lucky to see this photo. (Note 2.)" Sicheng Cheng immediately went to see the exhibition.The huge brackets in Jixian's photo reminded him of similar images in photos published by Japanese archaeologists Tokiwa Osada and Sekino Sada after their travels in China.He guessed that this might indicate that it was an early building.

The results of the interrogation were: From Beijing to Jixian, about 50 miles to the east, there is a bus at 6:00 every morning, and it is scheduled to arrive at 11:00.Liang Sicheng originally planned to rush there as soon as possible in the autumn of 1931.He packed his pack and was all set, but word came that the road was impassable because of a breach in a river embankment, and the trip had to be postponed.The final departure date was rescheduled in April. He was accompanied by a younger brother and a colleague from the Architecture Society. The equipment needed for the field trip was borrowed from a professor at Tsinghua University.What can centrally explain that this is an adventure trip by city people to an unfamiliar country is the phone call back to Beijing that night: "There are no bandits. Four people stay in a hotel for fifteen cents a night."

Sicheng wrote: "This was an unforgettable trip, and it was the first time I left the traffic main line. If the T-shaped old car (Note 3.) would have been sold as scrap iron in the United States, it would still be On a regular (or rather irregular) trip between Beijing and that small town. We left the east gate of Beijing a few miles to the Arrowgan River. In this dry season, the river is less than 30 feet wide But the sand river bed between the two banks is a mile and a half wide. After crossing the river by ferry, the car could not move a step on the soft ground. So we passengers had to help push the cart, pushing this old antique all the way across the river bed, and The engine roared right in our eyes and noses. There were other trouble spots and we had to climb up and down the car several times. The 50-mile trip took us over three hours. But we were very excited and fun. At that time I don't know yet. In the next few years, I'll get used to this kind of travel and not be surprised.

"The Guanyin Pavilion of Dule Temple stands high on the city wall and can be seen from a long distance. People can see its lifelike and peaceful image from a distance. This is the first important and ancient building in the history of Chinese architecture. It opened my eyes for the first time.” The Guanyin Pavilion was first built in 984 AD, which was the early years of the Song Dynasty, but it was still occupied by the Khitan people of the Liao Dynasty at that time, and the building had two floors with a dark floor.The bucket arches that transmit the weight of the roof to the capitals of the pillars are grand and simple.The lower part is supported by pillars with coiled caps, and the upper part is covered with a roof with deep eaves.The flat seats surrounding the upper floors are also supported by these bucket arches.In this way they form three essentially structural decorative bands.These are in stark contrast to those straight up and down columns and crowded small bucket arches of later generations.They resemble the buildings of the Tang Dynasty depicted in the Dunhuang murals.

The Guanyin Pavilion enshrines the 60-foot-tall, 11-headed Guanyin, which protrudes through a central opening in the upper two floors.On each floor there is a gallery running around it, which is about the height of the statue's waist and chest.This is the largest clay statue known to exist in China.The Guanyin Pavilion and the mountain gate in front of it are the two first discoveries of Sicheng. For a long time, they are the oldest wooden buildings in China in the new discovery records of the Architecture Society. From Sicheng's point of view, the importance of Guanyin Pavilion is that it is a good opportunity to study in detail a nearby temple whose construction time is very close to the Song Dynasty calligraphy "Zao Fa Shi".He uses the technical terminology of this work to carry on his description.He carefully compared the dimensions of the various building components of Dule Temple with those listed in the book.This comparison clarifies some obscure passages in the book and illuminates the early development of Chinese wooden architecture.

Until April 1979, 47 years after Liang Sicheng's first visit and more than two years after the earthquake that brought countless casualties and collapsed many houses in Beijing and Tianjin, Dule Temple and its gate tower were still intact.Ji County is closer to the epicenter of Tangshan than Beijing and Tianjin, but the thousand-year-old Guanyin Pavilion, a towering wooden building soaring into the sky, suffered little damage.This fact is a good indication of the good flexibility of its structure. Among the teachers in Ji County, the principal of the county middle school was a fascinated bystander and an occasional participant in the investigation team's research on Guanyin Pavilion.Sensing his interest, Sicheng told him about the characteristics of Dule Temple as a Liao Dynasty building, and pointed out how it is different from the buildings of later generations.The teacher replied, "In our hometown, Baodi County, Hebei Province, there is a Guangji Temple with very similar characteristics." He persuaded Sicheng to go and have a look.Later, Liang Sicheng said, "In this way, we are still in the middle of investigating the first place, and we already have clues to investigate the second place."

In June 1932, the Construction Society went to Baodi County for the second field survey.Sicheng and his party set off from Beijing and arrived at their destination after a arduous trek. They found out that Guangji Temple, as the teacher guessed, was another temple of the Liao Dynasty.Huge bucket arches and deep eaves immediately show that it has the characteristics of Liao Dynasty architecture.They entered the Great Hall of the Three Bodhisattvas and found that it was full of straw, which was used to supply the horses of a cavalry garrison stationed in the city.A group of workers were stacking straw, the sky was full of dust, and investigators could barely see the main hall.Inside, a row of statues—three bodhisattvas, a group of minor bodhisattvas, and eighteen arhats—are faintly visible in the dust.On the main altar is a stack of planks for the coffin.There are also a group of steles in the haystack, the most important one was carved in 1025.The locals call it the "Holy Monument" and think it is the most important relic of Baodi.

Sicheng wrote: "Looking up, we can see that the main hall has no ceiling, only the 'exposed roof' mentioned in "Zao Zao Fa Shi". We are familiar with the buildings of later generations. When we first arrived in Ji County, we felt quite hopeless, but this feeling disappeared immediately. We are all very happy. We just discovered Dule Temple a few months ago, and now we have seen another It is located in the Liao Dynasty building, which was built nearly a thousand years ago. How lucky!" Measurements started the next day were hampered by haystacks. "We climbed and burrowed into the hay, trying to get a good measure, but not quite right." Behind the main hall, the grass was piled up to the eaves, and it turned out to be very useful. "It was easy for us to climb up and measure the brackets, beams and squares accurately. There are advantages and disadvantages at the same time." As was often the case at the time, two ancient buildings, praised by the local press, have completely disappeared.The halls that Sicheng and the others had studied could not escape the same fate of destruction or collapse.Now it just exists in Sicheng's beautiful picture. Later that same year, the fieldwork and research work of the Architecture Society was intensified by the addition of a member, Liu Dunzhen (1897-1968).He was well trained in traditional Chinese when he was young, and then went to Japan on a government scholarship to continue his education.He finished middle school there, and in 1920 (Note 4.) graduated from the Architecture Department of Tokyo Higher Technical School.He stayed in Tokyo for an extra year working for a Japanese architect, and then joined another architectural firm in Shanghai after returning to China. However, he was a man with obvious intellectual tendencies after all, and soon found that teaching architecture was more suitable for him than practicing architecture. In 1925 he left Shanghai for his home province to teach at the Changsha Institute of Mechanical Engineering.He later went to the Suzhou Technical College, and when that school moved to Nanjing in 1927 he became a professor at the National Central University.He married in 1930. Liu Dunzhen has developed a strong interest in traditional Chinese architecture.Encouraged by his wife, he made the important decision to apply for a position at the Institute of Architecture, even though it meant taking a huge cut in his salary.Zhu Qiqian and Liang Sicheng discussed his letter of resume.They had read several articles written by him, including "The Relationship between Horyuji Temple and the Architectural Styles of the Han and Six Dynasties" written by Ko Hamada.Impressed by the article and his knowledge of Japanese scholars on the subject, he would obviously be a good help. In August 1932, Liu Dunzhen moved to Beijing to join the construction society.He is a quiet, neat-looking man, four years older than Sicheng.Due to this age gap, the academy made adjustments in personnel.Sicheng, who is younger but has a long seniority, used to be the "Director of the Research Department" and is now the "Director of the French Department".And Liu Dunzhen took the leadership position of "Director of Documentation Department".Since field research and literature research are operationally inseparable, each of them does both.For the next ten years, they led their young partners as mutually supportive collaborators.During these years of field work, Liu Dunzhen made many important discoveries, which are fully described in several major books published by Nanjing Institute of Technology. The first collaboration between Liang Sicheng and Liu Dunzhen was neither a field trip nor a literature study.Through Zhu Qiqian, the Construction Society undertook the task of restoring a two-story royal library, Wenyuan Pavilion, which was built in 1776 in the southwest corner of the Imperial Palace in Beijing. The "Siku Quanshu" of 6,000 volumes of ancient documents.It was compiled by order of Emperor Qianlong in the 1670s. In 1932, it was discovered that the beams and columns supporting the bookshelves had sunk greatly. The leaders of the Palace Museum asked the Society to find out and make a restoration plan. Liang Sicheng, along with his colleagues Liu Dunzhen and Cai Fangyin, began to make the detailed measurements on which the necessary calculations were based.Calculations show that the beams and columns bear about twice as much weight as they can safely carry.They proposed replacing the existing beams and columns with reinforced concrete girders.This is the first time that Liang Sicheng has participated in a project to restore ancient buildings.

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Note 1. This is the original text, and other sources say it differently——Translator's Note. Note 2. Letter from Yang Tingbao to the author, December 6, 1979. Note 3. Model T old broken car, an old Ford car that has long since ceased production.A translator's note Note 4. This is the original text, other sources say that he graduated in 1921. ——Translator's Note