Episode 118: Lin Huiyin
Lin Huiyin was born on June 10, 1904 in Hangzhou, China. Her father was Lin Changmin, a scholar and government official. The family moved to Peking (Beijing) in 1912. Huiyin’s mother He Xueyuan was a concubine. Her father’s wife couldn’t have children, so her mother was brought into the family to provide heirs. Huiyin had a brother and sister who eventually died. Her father took a second concubine to provide him with a son. This woman had one daughter and four sons. Huiyin’s father meets Liang Qichao and they propose a marriage between Huiyin and Qichao’s son, Liang Sicheng. Huiyin and Sicheng are told to consider the marriage in a few years time. Huiyin’s father co-founds China’s League of Nations Association after WWI and in 1920 goes to London for this work. He takes Huiyin with him and she enrolls at St Mary’s Collegiate School and becomes fluent in English. While in London, they meet Xu Zhimo, a poet. Zhimo falls in love with Huiyin and asks his wife for a divorce and proposes to Huiyin. Huiyin and her father deny Zhimo and return to Beijing. Meanwhile, Huiyin is writing lots of poetry and her poetry becomes well known in China over the years. Back in Beijing, she worked as a translator for poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore who visited from India in 1924. In the same year, Huiyin and Sicheng enroll at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to study architecture. They have decided to get married after they finish school. However, UPenn is not allowing women into their architecture program, despite Huiyin’s father’s and the Chinese ambassador’s appeals. So she takes graduate level architectural classes, but only receives a Fine Arts degree in 1927. Sicheng receives a Bachelors in Architecture degree the same year. After graduating, Huiyin and Sicheng get married in Canada on March 21, 1928. They honeymooned in Europe before returning to China.
Caryatid: Zhai Yongming
Yongming is a Chinese poet and essayist. She was born in 1955 in Chengdu, China during the Mao era. During the Cultural Revolution, she was forced to move to the countryside and do manual labor for two years as a teenager. After her mandatory labor, she went to the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and graduated in 1980. She went to work as an engineer at the Physics Research Institute but quit in 1986 to pursue a full-time career in poetry. She had been writing poetry before quitting her job and started getting published in 1981. From 1984-1986, she published a collection of 19 linked poems called ‘Woman’. Her poetry focuses on reshaping the concepts of gender and femininity. Particularly as it relates to Chinese culture. Some of her other notable works are ‘Jing’an Village, Plain Songs in the Dark Night, The Most Tactful Words, and Roaming the Fuchun Mountains with Huang Gongwang.’
References
Chow, Tony Perrottet, and Stefan Chow. “The Couple Who Saved China’s Ancient Architectural Treasures Before They Were Lost Forever.” Smithsonian Magazine, Jan. 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lovers-shanxi-saved-chinas-ancient-architectural-treasures-before-lost-forever-180961424.
Photographs by Stefan Chow
Elegant, Naomi. “The Story of Liang and Lin.” The Pennsylvania Gazette, 23 Oct. 2019, thepenngazette.com/21167-2.
Fairbank, Wilma. Liang and Lin: Partners in Exploring China’s Architectural Past. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.
“Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin.” YouTube, uploaded by China Documentary.
“Lin Huiyin.” Architectuul., architectuul.com/architect/lin-huiyin.
Roche, Daniel Jonas. “Lin Huiyin, visionary Chinese architect, preservationist, and activist, will be awarded a posthumous architecture diploma from UPenn.” The Architect’s Newspaper, 16 Oct. 2023, www.archpaper.com/2023/10/lin-huiyin-visionary-chinese-architect-preservationist-activist-awarded-posthumous-architecture-diploma-upenn.
Wikipedia contributors. “Lin Huiyin.” Wikipedia, 10 Nov. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Huiyin.
---. “Zhai Yongming.” Wikipedia, 13 Nov. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhai_Yongming.
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