Chapter 18 15.triumph and disaster

In the early summer of 1937, the Liangs discovered their long-awaited high-level prize—a surviving wooden structure building from the Tang Dynasty, which was their crowning achievement as scholars of Chinese architectural history. Their trip to the Mount Wutai area was prompted by their research on two Tang Dynasty murals in Cave 117 disclosed in the book "Dunhuang Grottoes" written by French sinologist Pelliot Pelliot.These two murals depict the panorama of Mount Wutai, a Buddhist holy place, and point out the names of each temple.The Liangs repeatedly encountered the disappointment of famous or wealthy Buddhist temples being rebuilt or completely remodeled over the years, making them instead seek out those unknown buildings.To this end, Liang Sicheng drew a map of the roads surrounding the entire mountain area.This decision is very important to their future success.

Sicheng, Huiyun, and Mo Zongjiang took a train to Taiyuan, the city closest to their goal in Shanxi Province, in June 1937.From Taiyuan to the north, they traveled comfortably by car for the first 80 miles, but they changed packs halfway and were carried by two mules one after the other to see Mount Wutai. It was only a few miles along this "unconventional" route that they came to their first discovery, which later became their greatest.This is the Foguang Temple built in 857 AD. Sicheng described their initial impressions like this (Note 1.): "The monastery is built on a very high platform on the side of the mountain, facing the front courtyard, surrounded by thirty very old pine trees. It is a very majestic building. It is only one story high, and it has huge , strong and simple bucket arches, and super long eaves, you can tell its age at a glance. But can it be older than the oldest wooden building we have found before?

"The tall door was opened to us at once. It was seven spans wide inside, and it was all the more splendid in the gloom. On a large platform, there was a seated statue of the Bodhisattva, and his attendants stood around him like a temple. Immortal forest. At the left end of the platform, a life-size woman in casual clothes sits, very small and wretched among the immortals. The monks tell us that she is the empress Wu who usurped the throne. The entire group of statues, although they are colored by recent renovations Bright and colorful, it is undoubtedly a work of the late Tang Dynasty. But if the clay statue is an undamaged original, then the house that shades it must also be the original Tang structure. Because rebuilding the house will definitely damage everything inside.

"Careful investigations began the next day. The bucket arches, girders, caissons, and carved plinths have all been carefully inspected. Individually or as a whole, they all clearly show the characteristics of the late Tang Dynasty. But my biggest The surprise came when we climbed into the dark space above the caisson. There I saw a kind of roof architecture that I know of only in Tang dynasty paintings. Using double 'main rafters' (borrowed from the modern roof Frame), instead of 'wangzhu', which is completely different from the practice of Chinese architecture in later generations, which is far beyond our expectations.

"This 'attic' is populated by thousands of bats, which congregate on the ridgelines like a thick layer of caviar, which prevents me from finding out what date might be written on it. Other than that , There are thousands of bedbugs that eat bat blood in the wood. The upper part of the ceiling where we are standing is covered with a thick layer of dust, which may have been accumulated for hundreds of years, and there are small dead bodies of bats lying in it from time to time. We wore thick masks over our mouths and noses, and spent hours measuring, drawing and taking pictures with flashlights in total darkness and unbearable stink. When we finally emerged from under the eaves for fresh air, we found in our backpacks Crawled with hundreds of bedbugs. We got bitten badly ourselves. But

It's the magnitude and serendipity of our find that makes these days some of the happiest I've been hunting for ancient architecture in years. "There must have been frescoes on the walls of the original hall. But the only frescoed part of the building that survives is the 'frieze'—the part of plaster above the lintel and between the bucket arches. The frieze painting in each part varies in level, and Evidently from a different period. There is a lacy painting of some Bodhisattvas, dated to 1122 A.D. There is a side one, of a Bodhisattva and his attendants, certainly older in date and artistic value It is also taller. The resemblance between this one and the murals in the Dunhuang Grottoes is the most amazing. It cannot be a work of other periods except the Tang Dynasty. Although it is only a small piece of wall and in an inconspicuous place, it is The only surviving Tang Dynasty murals in mainland China outside of the Dunhuang Grottoes that I know of.

"On the third day we were working in the hall, my wife noticed faint writing in Chinese ink under the root of a beam. This discovery was like an electric shock to all of us. Nothing like the actual writing on the temple beam There is nothing more delightful than a date inscribed on or carved in stone. The magnificent Tang Dynasty building is here—but how do I report the date of its construction? The Tang Dynasty lasted from 618 to 906. Now This piece of wood with faint writing is about to provide the answer I have been waiting for for a long time. While we were all busy trying to figure out how to set up scaffolding among the Buddha statues so that we could clean the beams and columns and examine the inscriptions up close, my wife went straight to work. She turned her head as much as possible. Leaning back, she tried her best to read the characters on the beam from different angles below. After such a hard work, she recognized some vague names and long Tang Dynasty official titles. The most important one was the one on the far right. On that beam, it was vaguely discernible at that time: "Ning Gongyu, a female disciple of the Master of the Buddha Hall".

"The benefactor is a woman! This young architect, who is a woman, will be the first to discover the strangest ancient temple in China, and it is obviously not a coincidence that the benefactor of this temple is also a woman. She was afraid that she might misread the illegible characters due to vivid hallucinations. But she remembered that she had seen similar official names on the stone pillars in front of the steps outside. She left the hall to verify what she saw on the stone pillars. She was overjoyed to find that, in addition to a large number of official names, the same sentence was written on the stone pillar: "Ning Gongyu, the female disciple of the master of the Buddha Hall". The date engraved on the stone pillar is "Tang Dazhong (Note 2.) Ten One year', equivalent to 857 AD. (Note 3.)

"So we understood: the woman dressed in casual clothes and sitting humbly at one end of the flat was not the 'Empress Wu' as the monks said, but Mrs. Ning Gongyu herself. "Assuming that the pillars of the scriptures were erected shortly after the completion of the main hall, the entire building can be approximately dated. This is 127 years earlier than the oldest wooden structure found before this. This is our The only Tang Dynasty wooden building encountered in these years of searching. Not only that, but in this same hall, we found Tang Dynasty paintings, Tang Dynasty calligraphy, Tang Dynasty sculptures, and Tang Dynasty architecture. Individually, he said, They are rare, but together they are unique. (Note 4.)”

Mr. and Mrs. Liang and Mr. Mo worked in Foguang Temple for a week. They inspected, took pictures, and made detailed records of the entire building complex.Before leaving the monastery, Sicheng reported his findings to the Shanxi provincial authorities.He and Huiyin were very emotional when they said goodbye to the abbot, and promised to come back next year and bring government funding for large-scale repairs.They made a general survey of the more open areas of Mount Wutai, but found nothing worthy of further investigation.Finally, they left Mount Wutai from the northern foot of the mountain on mules to Daixian, "a very well-planned city", where they temporarily settled in the ecstasy of the great discovery.They need a break in order to organize and review the large amount of material they have collected.

"There we were," wrote Liang Sicheng, "for several days in a pleasant mood. On the evening of July 15, after a hard day's work, we got a bundle of newspapers brought from Taiyuan because the road was flooded It was delayed for a few days. When we returned to the tent and lay on the cot to read the newspaper, the headline was: "The Japanese army violently attacked our Pingjiao stronghold". It has been a week since the war broke out. After some difficulties and detours ( via Datong), we returned to Peiping." The July 7th Incident - July 7, 1937, is a day of suffering in the memory of Beijingers.On this day, the Japanese finally took the action of occupying Beijing and attempting to conquer the whole of China.It began with an encounter between Japanese troops and the local Chinese garrison at Marco Polo Bridge outside Beijing.This was a Japanese camouflage similar to their first actions in Manchuria, intended to make such a general invasion and conquest seem inevitable to the world.The local army continued to resist for the next few weeks, but with no relief from Chiang Kai-shek, he hid in Nanking, reserving his German-trained troops for future resistance at an unspecified time. On July 29, Beijing was occupied by the Japanese and the fighting stopped. As they detoured home from the Japanese and puppet armies along the North Road, the mood of the Liangs turned from triumph to despair.But both of them are activists.The current crisis requires them to make plans and decisions, leaving them little time to be depressed.Their energies are devoted to questions like: Where are we going?when are we leaving?Which are our necessities, which are for the two kids and which are for grandma?How do we organize things and what to keep - not only things, but servants, relatives, friends and responsibilities?Packing, which had begun in the autumn of 1935, was now eagerly completed. Sicheng was of course very concerned about how to preserve the treasures of the Academy of Architecture and Architecture, including drawings, photographic negatives and photos, models, research notes, archives and books.Since Mr. Zhu, the founder of the Construction Society, still has no intention of leaving Beijing, the future of the Society, if any, depends on Sicheng himself.Therefore, when Huiyin was busy with housework (searching and sorting, burning some leftovers and giving away or selling others, and throwing away most of the rest), he cooperated with Liu Dunzhen and other colleagues to turn the society The most important materials are packed and sent to one place for storage.These materials include all the negatives, but he brought the photos and basic data with him, hoping to use them in the future.He also sent me for publication several English papers he had written on his discoveries. Kunming in the far southwestern province of Yunnan is their preferred refuge.At the same time, representatives of two prestigious universities in the Beijing area—Peking University and Tsinghua University—and Nankai University, an important university in Tianjin, decided to combine their teaching staff, students, and facilities that could be relocated, and establish a joint university "in exile."Their solemn aim was to thwart the Japanese militarists' attempts to limit the intellectual development of the conquered peoples--a design that was laid bare in their policies toward Korea, Taiwan, and Manchuria.The immediate plan is to establish a joint university in the central city of Changsha, Hunan. August in Beijing is a month of intense preparations, packing, consulting with loved ones and waiting for the right and possible time to leave.But when Sicheng was asked by the Japanese authorities to organize a Japan-China Friendship Association, time suddenly ran out.Ridiculous!Did they think that ten years of his childhood in Japan would turn him into a taming tool?Apparently he had to hurry before they forbid him to leave. Note 1. Excerpted from Liang Sicheng: "Looking for Ancient Architecture". Note 2. Dazhong is the year name of Tang Xuanzong Li Chen. ——Translator's Note. Note 3. Immediately after the mass execution of Buddhists in AD 845-847. Note 4. According to the author's original note, it comes from Liang Sicheng's "Looking for Ancient Architecture", but the original text was not found, so the translation only checked some technical terms based on other materials. ——Translator's Note