Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng, Chroniclers of Chinese Architecture (II)

文/丹尼尔·E.斯洛特尼克 译/程颋

Though Lin and Liang worked to save remnants of ancient China,their lives were inextricably entangled with1entangle sb/sth (in/with sth) 使纠缠。modern Chinese history.

[2] Liang was born in Tokyo on April 20, 1901, where his father, Liang Qichao, a leading Chinese intellectual and reformist, was stationed. Lin was born in Hangzhou, China, on June 10,1904. Children of prominent families,they both lived and studied abroad and grew up to be open-minded intellectuals when much of Chinese society was constrained by strict traditions.

[3] Their families knew each other,and they journeyed to the United States together to attend the University of Pennsylvania in 1924. Lin was enthusiastic about studying architecture, but the university’s architecture school would not admit her because it was considered improper for young ladies to work late into the night, unsupervised,with young men. So when they graduated in 1927 Lin earned a bachelor of fine arts degree, having taken classes in architecture, and Liang became the ofif cial architect, earning a bachelor’s and later a master’s degree in the field. But they always worked together.

尽管林徽因和梁思成的工作是拯救古代中国建筑遗迹，但他们的生活却和现代中国历史不可分割地纠缠在一起。

[2]梁思成于1901年4月20日出生于东京，当时他的父亲、中国杰出的知识分子和改革家梁启超居住在那里。林徽因于1904年6月10日出生于中国杭州。两人皆出自名门。在大部分中国社会还为严格的传统所束缚的时候，他们却在海外生活学习，成长为思想开明的知识分子。

[3]双方的家庭是世交。1924年，林徽因和梁思成一起前往美国，到宾夕法尼亚大学求学。林徽因很想学建筑学，但宾大建筑学院不肯招收她，理由是年轻女士在无人监护的情况下，和年轻男子一起工作到深夜，被视为不得体。所以当他们于1927年毕业时，林徽因拿到了美术学士学位，并已选修过建筑方面的课程；而梁思成正式成为建筑师，先后拿到这一领域的学士学位和硕士学位。但两人始终在一起工作。

[4] “I think they saw each other as partners, not as business but as life partners,” Nancy S. Steinhardt2美国宾夕法尼亚大学东亚语言与文明系系主任、宾夕法尼亚大学艺术博物馆中国艺术分馆馆长。, a professor of East Asian art at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied the couple’s work, said in a telephone interview. “It’s not clear who did which parts of drawings or articles they wrote;they were a team.”

[5] At first glance they made an incongruous3incongruous不合适的；不相称的。couple. Lin was a glamorous, vivacious polymath4polymath博学家。who wrote poetry, fiction, criticism and drama, and made her home into a kind of intellectual salon.

[6] Liang was a highly focused architect and teacher who could be taciturn5taciturn不苟言笑的；沉默寡言的。,but warmed to people once he knew them. Their differences proved complementary, much to the bene fit of Chinese architecture.

[4]“我认为他们视彼此为伙伴，不是工作上的合伙人，而是生活中的伴侣。”宾夕法尼亚大学的东亚艺术教授夏南悉研究过两人的作品，她在电话采访中说，“分不清楚哪些图是谁画的，哪些文章是谁写的，他们是一个团队。”

[5]乍看上去这对夫妇并不相配。林徽因是个魅力四射、生气勃勃、博学多识的人，她写诗歌、小说、评论和戏剧，把自己的家变成了知识分子的沙龙。

[6]而梁思成是个非常专注于工作的建筑师和教师，他不爱说话，但和别人熟悉之后，又对人很热情。事实证明，两人的不同之处正是互补之处，这对他们研究中国建筑的工作大有裨益。

[7] Lin entertained several suitors as a young woman, including the poet Xu Zhimo, but married Liang in Canada in 1928, where they traveled after their graduation. After several months in Europe they returned to China, where Liang and Chinese colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania founded the architecture department at Northeastern University in Shenyang, the country’s second architecture program61928年7月，东北大学建筑系创建，是我国近代较早设立的高等建筑教育机构之一。从美国宾夕法尼亚大学毕业的梁思成、林徽因应张学良校长的邀请，来校创办了我国北方的第一个建筑系。梁思成先后邀请到陈植、童寯、蔡方荫等大师加盟东北大学建筑系，首届招生15人。早期东北大学建筑系虽然只办了3年，却培养了一批像刘致平、刘鸿典、张镈、赵正之、陈绎勤等卓有成就的建筑学者和大师。. His academic writings and lectures from the 1930s were eventually bound and released as “A History of Chinese Architecture,” a rare effort to write a comprehensive book about the subject.

[8] During the early 1930s, after moving to Beijing, they began regular expeditions into the Chinese countryside to seek out some of the remaining ancient wooden structures, surviving examples of the architecture Mr. Liang detailed in his book.

[9] Their explorations ended when Japanese forces invaded China in 1937.In 1940 the extended Liang family7extendedfamily大家庭（几代同堂的家庭）。,now with a young daughter and a son,relocated8relocate重新安置。to a cottage they built in a village near Kunming in southern China. Lin’s tuberculosis got worse, and the straitened9straitened贫困的。circumstances of wartime made life all but intolerable.

[7]林徽因年轻时有几个追求者，其中就有诗人徐志摩。但她于1928年在加拿大嫁给了梁思成，当时他们已经毕业，正在旅行途中。在欧洲逗留几个月后，这对夫妇回到中国。回国后，梁思成和几位毕业于宾夕法尼亚大学的中国同事在沈阳创办了东北大学建筑系，这是中国第二个专门研究建筑的机构。后来他将自己20世纪30年代以来的学术著作和讲座内容结集出版为《中国建筑史》，这是这一领域难得的综合性著作。

[8] 20世纪30年代早期，林徽因和梁思成搬到北京后，开始经常到中国乡村考察，搜寻古代木结构建筑遗迹。梁思成在他的书里详细记载了这些幸存下来的建筑。

[9] 1937年，日军入侵中国后，他们的考察工作停止了。1940年，梁家搬到中国南部昆明附近的一个村庄，那时他们已经有了一双年幼的儿女，一家人住在自建的平房里。林徽因的肺结核病情加重，加上战争时期经济拮据，他们的生活非常艰难。

[10] During the war they used their copious notes, photographs and drawings to continue writing about architecture. When the war ended Liang became a visiting professor at Yale and China’s representative to the committee that designed the United Nations building in Manhattan in 1949. Lin, burdened by caring for her family and by illness,remained in China.

Lin’s health worsened, and she died of tuberculosis on April 1, 1955, at 51.

[11] Liang, who had returned to China to care for her, continued to work and teach and eventually remarried. He died on Jan. 9, 1972, at 70.

[12] The work of Liang and Lin lived on, with the help of Fairbank and Liang’s second wife, Lin Zhu. Decades after Liang’s death10梁思成于1972年去世，1980年费慰梅几经周折找到手绘图和照片，1984年出版英文版《图像中国建筑史》。故此处译为“梁思成去世多年后”。, they tracked down his lost drawings and photographs.Fairbank combined them with his written work to create “A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture,” which was published in 1984. It is an in-depth look at Chinese architecture, documenting many buildings that no longer stand.

[10]战争期间，他们根据大量的笔记、照片和手绘图继续撰写建筑方面的文章。战争结束后，梁思成赴耶鲁大学任客座教授，并在1949年作为中国代表在曼哈顿联合国总部大厦设计委员会中担任顾问。林徽因则因为要照顾家庭，并为疾病所累，一直留在中国。

后来林徽因健康状况恶化，于1955年4月1日因肺结核病去世，终年51岁。

[11]那时候，为了照顾林徽因，梁思成返回了中国。之后继续工作和教学，后来再婚。1972年1月9日，梁思成去世，终年70岁。

[12]多亏了费慰梅和梁思成的第二任妻子林洙的努力，梁思成和林徽因的工作成果得以留存于世。梁思成去世多年后，她们找到了遗失的手绘图和照片。费慰梅将这些资料和他的文稿合璧，于1984年出版了《图像中国建筑史》。这部著作是关于中国建筑的深度研究，记载了很多已经消失的建筑。

[13] Lin’s niece, the architect and artist Maya Lin, who is known for making the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, told Smithsonian Magazine in 2017 that “most people in China know more about Liang and Lin’s personalities and love lives than their work.”

“But from an architectural point of view, they are hugely important,” she continued. “If it weren’t for them, we would have no record of so many ancient Chinese styles, which simply disappeared.” ■

[13]建筑师和艺术家林璎是林徽因的侄女，她因设计华盛顿的越战纪念碑而闻名。2017年，林璎对《史密森尼杂志》的记者说：“在中国，很多人对梁思成和林徽因的品格和爱情生活的了解超过了对他们工作的了解。”

“但从建筑学的角度来讲，他们的地位是极其重要的。”她继续说，“如果没有他们，这么多中国古代建筑风格会就此消失而留不下任何记录。” □