Chapter 20 17.Settled in Kunming

Kunming is the capital of Yunnan Province, which borders Myanmar to the south and west.The city was so far away from the great cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Guangzhou on the east coast that few modernized Chinese in the pre-war regions of the above knew of or visited it.In the early twentieth century, the French built a narrow-gauge railway from Haiphong in Indochina to this place, hoping to make money from mining in this inland village.For a period of time after the Japanese invasion, this railway served as a good passage to the southwest for those refugees from the east coast of China who could afford boat and train tickets.

For the Liang family who came from Beijing by the difficult overland road, Kunming's bright sunshine, mild climate and beautiful lakes and mountains are very gratifying.Despite the warm and pleasant climate, the people of Yunnan are mostly apathetic and dissatisfied.They regarded as intruders refugees from the East Coast escaping the Japanese invasion—these provincials speaking strange dialects came almost empty-handed and disrupted the course of life here.For ordinary people in the province, national humiliation and national pride are unfamiliar.What did it matter to them that the Japanese invaded the far eastern provinces?This attitude, of course, was intended to arouse indignation among the refugees who refused to cooperate with the Japanese invaders.

The outlook for Campus is bleak—no funding, no director, no staff.If it still exists at this time, it only exists in Siben's determination to rebuild it here.At the same time, the cost of living is constantly rising and the funds available are dwindling with no hope of support, which is scary.Sicheng and Hui had no choice but to rely on their architect skills to design houses for some "despicable rich and profiteers".Their employers are a loathsome bunch, and their pay is erratic.In this chaotic situation, the pitiful effort to support the family was over by mid-1938.At that time, Sicheng suffered from severe spinal arthritis and muscle spasms, which forced him to stay in bed for six months.His determination paid off during his recovery.The China Academy of Construction has started in Yunnan in a faltering manner.Zhou Yichun is the acting chairman, and the Chinese Cultural Foundation has a small sum available for next year's funding, as long as Liang Sicheng continues to lead the research work as before.Among other things, the Chinese government hinted that he would experiment with building cheap university buildings from local materials.The biggest change obviously happened to Liang Sicheng himself.His letters in the past had always expressed deep dissatisfaction, and now there was hope again.His architectural society can continue to work, his family can feed again, and most gratifyingly, his expertise is now available in Kunming again.

At the beginning of March 1938, teachers and students of the United Nations University began to come to Kunming from Changsha.At least some came from Haiphong by narrow-gauge railway.Among them is Lao Jin.He reunited happily with the Liang family and other good friends.Huiyin wrote to us, "I like listening to Lao Jin and (Zhang) Xi Ruoxiao, which in a way helped me endure this war. It shows that we are still the same kind of people after all." Three days later, Lao Jin wrote us a letter describing his first impressions. "If you were here, you would see some familiar faces in unfamiliar surroundings. Some of them had nothing on but a suit or a gown and nothing in the box. Others People can find a shared house. Zhang Xiruo’s family came before me. The library of Academia Sinica will soon move here. Liang Siyong and Li Ji will arrive within a few days, and Zhao Yuanren has been here for several days. I think here Like in Changsha, there will be a kind of miniature Beijing life, only it will be materially deficient. The weather may be an exception. The sun is very bright, and as Hui Yin said to me yesterday, some places are very similar to Italy.” As for Whein herself, after a long separation, he described her: "Still so charming, lively, expressive and radiant - I can't think of more words to describe her. The only difference is that she no longer has many Opportunity to talk and laugh, because there really isn't much to tell and laugh with the current state of the country."

Finally he said, "In fact, our state of mind is somewhat serious. There are hidden thoughts, hopes and anxieties in our hearts that we don't express. There is an undercurrent of emotion, and on the surface we are only concerned with the many trivial things we call daily life like houses, food. For those in the UNU circle, the problem is that the location of the university has not been decided until now. Come down. There are many human barriers and material difficulties. It is not easy to maintain China's higher education, but I think we will succeed." The cadets who had made friends with the Liang family in Huang County had by this time graduated from the Air Force Academy in Kunming.They invited Sicheng and Huiyin to attend their graduation ceremony as their parents.Following the ceremony, there were frequent air raid sirens, and finally there was a big one. Twenty-three Fiat bombers attacked in two batches, bombed the Air Force Academy, and destroyed the planes parked on the ground.This was the first time the newly graduated Air Force cadets had an encounter with the enemy. One of their pilot friends, Senior Lieutenant, shot down one of the enemy planes and chased the rest to the border of Guangxi, but it was clearly the Japanese who won.

After a few days, the high lieutenant was driving a plane with a broken fuel gauge, so he had to make an emergency landing. "He didn't get back on the slow train until the third morning. We didn't sleep well the two nights he was missing, and it was great to see him back safe and sound with a minor injury to his jaw. We were all over the city I got first-hand information about the battle and its outcome when it was still unclear. "These eight young fighters are brave and full of outspoken confidence in our country and the War of Resistance Against Japan. They are all in enviable physical condition, and they have been trained to contribute their skills unconditionally and, when necessary, to Giving their lives. They were very quiet kids, every single one of them.

"They were attached to us in a very innocent, childlike way. A great love had developed among us. They came to my house or wrote to us as a family. Several went to war, some stayed In Kunming, protecting our lives. One of them I wrote to you once told you that he can play the violin very well, and he is the most lovable one, and he is now engaged. Don’t ask me if he gets married and goes out again What's going on, what's going to happen to his girlfriend. We just can't answer those kinds of questions." Over the next few years, each of these pilots was killed in combat.Their relics were all sent to the Liang family.By the end of the war, none of the eight were still alive.

The Liang family occupies three rooms in one residence, and most of the residence is occupied by the Huang family.Huiyin once gave a brief description of the situation at home: "Sicheng smiled and hunched (now his back is even more hunched than before), Lao Jin was about to open our small cupboard to find something to eat, and the children , now there are five - two from our family, two from the Huang family, and one from Siyong (Sicheng's younger brother). The baby often has a girl's demure smile and grows more and more beautiful , and the younger brother is strong and mischievous, with wide open eyes, he is exactly what I expect a boy. He is really an artist, can carefully draw some planes, anti-aircraft guns, tanks and many other many military inventions."

It was around this time that the manuscript of Sicheng's English dissertation on the Dashiqiao in Zhao County in the 6th century AD arrived at Cambridge.He sent it when they set off west from Tianjin, hoping it would be published in America.I approached William Emerson, the head of the MIT architecture department and himself an expert on the history of French architecture, for advice.It just so happened that one of the subjects of his research was the earliest scattered-arch bridge in France, which was ten centuries later than its Chinese forerunner.He examined with growing interest the exquisite drawings and Lycra photos accompanying the manuscript, and after reading the manuscript, he sent the manuscript to the authoritative architectural magazine "Pencil Point" (Pencil Point), with his own recommendation letter. "Nib" published the paper twice in the January and March 1938 issues.

"Nip" paid the author a manuscript fee, but the real surprise for Sicheng and his wife was when they received the journal that published the paper.The thesis is printed on fine paper, which enhances the pictures, and the layout of the article is loose and elegant.This success restored Sicheng to the American architects and architects who had discovered him during his final years in Beijing.His mood was greatly elevated as a result. As the Institute of Architecture was re-established and funded in Kunming, albeit on a smaller scale, architectural historians among the staff who had recently arrived from Beijing also began their systematic investigation of ancient Chinese architecture in the region.Among their finds are a handful of Song dynasty monasteries (Note 1.), but they are no more than local copies of larger examples already studied and described in the architectural society Hui Kan.When Sicheng was suffering from spondyloarthritis, Liu Dunzhen came to Kunming.He began his investigations near Kunming and led a team further west to Dali and Lijiang to study pagodas, temples, and civil buildings.

Until this time, the Society had paid little attention to the study of housing construction.This is because the main goal of its research is to discover the various stages of development of Chinese architecture through the buildings preserved over the centuries.Civil buildings are less relevant to this for several reasons.The rich man's house becomes different from the original form according to the intention of the owner.The dwellings of the poor disintegrate because of the inability of the occupants to cope with the destruction of the forces of nature or simply through neglect.As for those palaces in the capital, they were often burned or demolished by their successors at the end of the dynasty. However, traveling across fifteen hundred miles of inland countryside from Beijing to Kunming, sleeping in villages at night, under arduous and exhausting conditions, opened the eyes of researchers to the architectural peculiarities of Chinese dwellings. importance.The characteristics of these dwellings, their relation to the way of life of their inhabitants, and their variation in various parts of China suddenly became obvious and interesting. In the autumn of 1939, Sicheng left Kunming with a delegation from the Construction Society to conduct a six-month extensive and detailed investigation of forty counties in Sichuan Province.Along with them are Liu Dunzhen, Mo Zongjiang and Chen Mingda.They made their usual visits to temples and pagodas, measuring, photographing and researching.Not surprisingly, they found that the pagodas here, like the temples, reflected developments in the Central Plains of China, albeit later in time. At the same time, they were delighted to discover a cliff tomb near Jiangkou Town, Pengshan County, western Sichuan, which represents wooden structures from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD).They are keen to examine this relatively little-known early stage of Chinese architectural development in detail.They have the expertise, but lack the money to fund new research projects and their reports, or to publish reports on their existing discoveries in the Southwest. In the spring of 1940, before Sicheng returned from Sichuan, under the supervision of Huiyin, the three-room house they jointly designed was completed in Longtou Village, a small village eight miles from Kunming.Being so far from the city, they hoped to avoid the bombing. "It cost twice as much as we thought we could afford," Whein wrote. "Now we are completely bankrupt and feel worse than ever. The price of rice has risen to a hundred yuan a bag—we Came in at $3.40 - everything else went up about the same. Nothing we've done this year has been easy. I'm embarrassed when I tell you what we're doing and where we're at. Sicheng to It’s been five months since I went to Sichuan. I’ve been very ill and I haven’t recovered yet.” Although the checks we often send are not directly useful because the things the family needs are practically unavailable, there are One exception is the payment of construction costs for a three-room home.The checks we sent, which arrived in September 1940, happened to solve the problem. Life is hard.No hot or cold running water.The first thing I bought was a large earthen water tank, three or four feet high, to hold the water that was brought into the house.A water vat is so important to a family that when a vat-burning kiln opens, women crowd each other and even fight, lest they can't buy it.Cooking is done leaning over a three-legged brazier, the top of which is no more than eighteen inches from the kitchen dirt floor.It can only support a pot.The fuel is briquettes made of coal ash and mud.They have to be fanned enough to cook.To bathe, do laundry, or wash dishes, one has to scoop water out of a tank and heat it on this or another "stove," and any household that has a large thermos to store hot water considers it the most precious thing in the home the property of.Add to this the dusty or muddy trek to the village to buy affordable food to take home.This has to be done every day because refrigeration doesn't exist, it's never even thought about.Of course there is no telephone or means of transportation.Vegetable oil lamps are used for lighting, but they are also expensive, so it is best to sleep as soon as it gets dark, like the villagers.Changing clothes that are worn out or that are too small for the kids can be a big problem.Cloth is almost nonexistent.In a word, war, inflation and a primitive way of life have turned the Liang family into a poor family. Asked about her day-to-day life, Huiyin said, "As soon as I got up, I started sweeping the yard and doing hard work, then I went shopping and cooking, then I tidied up and washed, and then it was like seeing a ghost. There was no time to feel anything, and I ended up going to bed moaning in pain and wondering why I was alive. That was all." Lao Jin summed up his views on Huiyin's life in this period in two simple sentences: "She is still very busy, but even busier in these noisy days. In fact, she really has no time to waste, so she has risk wasting her life." When Sicheng returned after six months away from home, Huiyin wrote: "We now live in a newly built three-bedroom house at the end of a medium-sized village eight miles from Kunming city. It is surrounded by good scenery and has no military targets. Our house consists of three spacious rooms and the end of an alley A kitchen in my house, where I spend most of my time, and a servant's room which is still vacant until now. In the spring, Lao Jin added a 'side room' at the end of our house. In this way, the whole Beizong The hutong group is now in order, but God knows how long it will last. "Many friends, including (Qian) Duansheng, also built small houses here. Our house was built last, so in the end we had to fight for every board, brick and nail we needed. Struggle, but also have to take part in the delivery of materials and the actual carpentry and stonemasonry. “Something about the house,” she said, “isn’t without beauty or delight. We love it, we’re even proud of it.” Oddly enough, this is the only house the two architects have designed for themselves.It is located outside the village.It is on the edge of an open depression, close to a high embankment, with a row of tall straight pine trees growing on it, just like in the old paintings.The beautiful environment and climate immediately aroused a response in Huiyin's heart: "The weather has turned cooler at this time, and under the increasingly strong autumn floodlight, the scenery is really beautiful. The air is full of fragrance, and Wildflowers bring back a thousand long-forgotten wonderful feelings. On any given morning or afternoon, the sun creeps in from a strange angle into the traumatized objects we still have in a world of chaos and disaster. A sense of tranquility and beauty. But war, especially our war against Japan, still reigns supreme, close to our bodies and minds." By November, Huiyin wrote that the bombing had become more and more fierce. "The machine gun fire from the Japanese bombers and the pursuing planes was the same pain. It didn't matter whether the plane was directly above or far away, it was the same-it was a feeling of vomiting in the stomach, especially when one was still This is especially true when nothing has been eaten, and there will be no food for a long time during the day. "Poor old Jin, he has a class in the city in the morning, and he often leaves the village at 5:30 in the morning, and even before class, he encounters an air raid, so he has to run out with a large group of people again, Walking to another city gate, another mountain in another direction, and walking back to the village in a big circle until after 5:30 in the afternoon, I didn’t eat, work, or rest all day, and I was delayed for doing this. " Intensified bombing in November forced the Liang family to leave their warm hut and dear friends to move again.Sicheng was appointed as a researcher of the Academia Sinica after his return from Sichuan, and Dr. Zhou Yichun, the current chairman of the Academy of Construction, nominated Sicheng to be the president of the academy and attached the academy to the government-backed Academia Sinica Institute of Historical Languages.Academia Sinica is under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education.The Ministry of Education ordered the research institute of the Academy to move from Kunming to Lizhuang, a small town on the south bank of the Yangtze River, about 200 miles west of Chongqing, Sichuan. Sicheng said in a letter, "This relocation makes us very frustrated. It means that we will be separated from a group of friends we have known for more than ten years. We will go to a research institute far away from the Central Academy of Sciences. Any other institution, a completely unfamiliar place away from any 'big city'. The University will remain in Kunming, as will Lao Jin, Duan Sheng, Xi Ruo and others. Wherever we flee to, we will Many days, many hours a day, interrupting the day-to-day - working, eating and sleeping - to run the alarm. But I think the situation in the UK is much worse." Note 1. This is the original text, and the records in other materials are different. ——Translator's Note