Liang Sicheng

Liang Sicheng was born in Tokyo, Japan, on April 20, 1901; his family’s ancestral home was Xinhui in Guangdong.⁠[1][2]

He was born in the third year of his father Liang Qichao’s exile in Japan, where Liang Qichao had fled after the failure of the reforms of 1898; his father returned to China only in 1912.⁠[3][4]

Lou Qingxi’s biography of him in Biographies of Chinese Scientific and Technological Experts states that as a child he attended an overseas Chinese school in Japan and, under his father’s influence and urging, read the Zuo zhuan, the Shiji and other classics from an early age, which gave him a good grounding in and a strong interest in ancient Chinese culture, and that he returned from Japan to Beijing at the age of 11.⁠[3]

From 1906 to 1912 he attended the kindergarten of the Datong School in Yokohama and the lower primary classes of the Tongwen School in Kobe. In 1912 he returned to China with his parents, living first in Tianjin and then in Beijing, and from 1912 to 1915 he attended the upper primary classes of the Huiwen School and the Chongde School in Beijing.⁠[5][6]

In 1915, at the age of 14, he entered the Tsinghua School in Beijing, a preparatory school for study in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry, where he studied for eight years before graduating in 1923.⁠[7][1][2][3]

Dou Zhongru wrote in the CPPCC News in 2025 that at Tsinghua he studied the piano with Zhang Aizhen together with his younger brother Liang SiyongLiang SiyongLiang Siyong (1904–1954) was a Chinese archaeologist and the second son of Liang Qichao. From 1930 he took part in and directed excavations for the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica at Angangxi in Heilongjiang, Chengziya in Shandong and Yinxu at Anyang in Henan, discovered the three-layer stratigraphy at Hougang and gave the Longshan culture its name; he was elected to the first class of academicians of Academia Sinica in 1948 and from 1950 was deputy director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.Open the full entry, Huang Zi and two or three others, learned the violin from a Filipino, Fan Lusuo, and could sing both the bass and the alto parts in the choir; the school formed a wind band around 1918 under the Dutchman Haimensi, and from 1919 Liang led it, playing first trumpet and also the piccolo.⁠[8]

He was a member of the Tsinghua art society, a skilled sketcher, and in 1922–1923 art editor of a Tsinghua student publication (Dou Zhongru names it Qinghua ren, while Chen Zhi’s recollection names the Tsinghua yearbook), drawing illustrations and cartoons; the often-reproduced watercolour of the Xiequ Garden in the Summer Palace is his. Dou Zhongru writes that, although he had a disabled foot as a child, he was a well-known athlete at Tsinghua. Liang himself recalled that he had been a good pupil of Ma Yuehan and a well-known footballer, had won the high jump at the school sports meeting and was good on the bars and at rope climbing, training that later let him climb beams and columns with ease when measuring old buildings. His physical-education teacher Ma Yuehan said that Liang was very good at sport, could climb high and was very good at rope climbing, and that later, in the United States, he hurt his lower back through sport and then fell ill, after which his health declined.⁠[8]

In 1920, under Liang Qichao’s guidance, he translated a British work, the Outline of World History, together with Xu Zongxu and his brother Liang Siyong; revised by Liang Qichao, the translation was published by the Commercial Press in 1927.⁠[5]

In June 1922 he went to Manila in the Philippines to visit his mother, Li Huixian, who had been convalescing there since March, and his eldest sister, Liang Sishun, who lived there with her husband, Zhou Xizhe, then consul-general in Manila.⁠[5]

On May 7, 1923, having graduated from Tsinghua and while at home in Beijing preparing to study in the United States, he set out, as a member of a patriotic ten-person group at Tsinghua, to join a rally at Tiananmen marking the anniversary of the National Humiliation Day. Riding the motorcycle that his elder sister Liang Sishun had given him when he visited the Philippines the year before, with Liang Siyong on board, he chased after the marchers and, as he turned from the corner of Nanchang Street into the main road, was knocked down by a large car travelling at speed. In the car was Jin Yongyan, vice-minister of the army in the Beiyang government; no one got out to help, and a calling card was thrown from the window for the police who came to deal with the accident before the car drove off.⁠[8]

Under public pressure Jin Yongyan apologised and paid the brothers’ medical costs; their mother, Li Huixian (Dou Zhongru’s article writes her given name with a different first character), demanded that the person responsible be punished, and in the end the government laid the blame on the chauffeur and the president apologised to the Liang family.⁠[8][9]

Doctors at first judged his injuries slight and surgery unnecessary, and found that Liang Siyong had only skin wounds needing a week in hospital; in fact Liang Sicheng had injured his spine and suffered a compound fracture of the right femur. He had three operations by the end of May, and his right leg remained about 1 centimetre shorter than the left. After he left hospital his father said he could walk like anyone else, but the spinal injury troubled him for the rest of his life and made his field surveys of old buildings especially hard. The excerpt from Liang Zaibing’s memoir also quotes John King Fairbank as saying that his spinal injury was a lasting effect of a car accident in his youth.⁠[8][10]

Lou Qingxi’s biography gives a different account of the accident: on his way to a commemoration at Tiananmen Square of the national humiliation of the Twenty-One Demands, he was struck by the car of a warlord, Jin Yonggui, and broke his left leg, so that his study in the United States had to be postponed by a year.⁠[3]

After the accident he was rushed to the Peking Union Medical College Hospital. While he was in hospital, Liang Qichao looked after him both practically and emotionally and also directed his reading.⁠[5][11]

In June 1924 he and Lin Huiyin went to the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania, commonly called Penn, is a private research university and Ivy League member in Philadelphia. It traces its origins to a 1740 charity-school project; Benjamin Franklin proposed his academy in 1749, classes began in 1751, and a 1791 merger established the institution under its present name. Penn has 12 schools, with undergraduate education concentrated in arts and sciences, engineering, nursing and Wharton. Enrollment totaled 29,384 in fall 2025, and the fiscal 2025 endowment was $24.81 billion. As of October 2026, J. Larry Jameson was president, with his term scheduled to end on June 30, 2027.Open the full entry in the United States to apply to its department of architecture; having missed the spring admission, they had to wait for the autumn intake and in the meantime took courses at Cornell UniversityCornell UniversityCornell University is a private research university in Ithaca, New York, and a member of the Ivy League. It is New York State's federal land-grant university, a distinction unique within the Ivy League. Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White founded the university in 1865, and it opened in 1868. In addition to its Ithaca campus, Cornell operates Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell Tech in New York City and a medical college in Qatar. It enrolled 26,793 students in fall 2024. Its president is Michael I. Kotlikoff.Open the full entry. In September 1924 he and his Tsinghua classmate Chen Zhi registered in the department of architecture; because the department did not admit women, Lin Huiyin registered in the department of fine arts.⁠[12][13]

In the 1920s some 25 Chinese students, most of them on Boxer Indemnity scholarships, came to the university to study architecture under Paul Philippe Cret; a 2004 article in The Pennsylvania Gazette calls him the most famous of them. Cret had come to Penn in 1903 to lead its architecture programme and retired in 1937. Liang also took courses in heating and plumbing, and in three years earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in architecture (designated Ar’27 and GAr’27 in The Pennsylvania Gazette), receiving the master’s degree in June 1927; Tsinghua University’s 2021 exhibition describes him as graduating with outstanding results.⁠[14][13][15][7]

In a letter to Liang Sicheng and Liang Siyong their father wrote, in words that translate as “If you move up a year, well and good; if not, there is no need for resentment — the only question is whether you have truly worked hard”; when Liang Sicheng came to doubt his chosen field, his father advised him that “each should examine for himself what lies closest to his nature”, so as to “bring out the particular strengths of his character” (both in translation). Liang Sicheng said that his father’s methods had influenced him and Liang Siyong especially.⁠[16]

While he was studying at Penn, Liang Qichao sent him a copy of the old building manual Yingzao fashi, writing in a letter, in words that translate as “A masterpiece existed a thousand years ago; it may be the glory of our people’s culture.” In 2021 the book was displayed in the central case of Tsinghua University’s documentary exhibition on Liang Sicheng.⁠[17]

In April 1924 he helped to receive the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore on his lecture tour of China, and came to know Hu Shih, Xu Zhimo, Chen Xiying, Zhang Xinhai, Ding Xilin and others.⁠[5]

The chronology printed by Jin Lei in 2021 dates his bachelor’s degree from Penn’s department of architecture to February 1927 and his master’s degree to June 1927, and records that from June to August 1927 he worked as an associate designer in Paul Philippe Cret’s office.⁠[5]

On September 13, 1924, his mother, Li Huixian, died of cancer; by then he had gone to the United States to enter the University of Pennsylvania.⁠[5]

In September 1927 he entered the graduate school of Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry to study art history and wrote to his father proposing a systematic study of the history of Chinese palace architecture as his doctoral dissertation. In his reply of December 23, 1927, Liang Qichao said that conditions in China made field travel difficult, suggested that he first undertake by-products such as a history of Chinese art, and proposed a field survey of the ruins of the Wu Liang Shrines in Jiaxiang County.⁠[15][1][18]

Li Chuanxi writes that the plan for a history of palace architecture later became his History of Chinese Architecture, and that the idea of writing a history of Chinese sculpture also grew out of it.⁠[15]

The chronology printed by Jin Lei in 2021 dates his entry to Harvard’s graduate school to July 1927 and records that in February 1928 he was preparing a doctoral dissertation on the history of Chinese palace architecture under Langdon Warner; having read all the material on Chinese architecture he could find, he concluded that it was not enough for the dissertation and agreed with his supervisor to return to China to survey buildings and gather material, and to submit the dissertation two years later.⁠[5]

In March 1928 he married Lin Huiyin in Canada, and the couple then travelled in Europe; Lou Qingxi writes that before returning to China he visited famous historic buildings in Greece, Italy, France, Spain and elsewhere.⁠[19][20][21][3]

On May 8, 1928, Liang Qichao wrote to him about setting up an architecture department at Northeastern University; The World of Chinese states that in July 1928 Northeastern University established its architecture department and invited him, newly married and returning to China, to be a professor.⁠[21][19]

China News Service gave the date of the wedding in 2024 as March 21, 1928; the chronology printed by Jin Lei in 2021 gives March 31, 1928, in Ottawa, Canada.⁠[22][5]

Liang Qichao wrote to him before the wedding that, if they married in a church, he should take his father’s full name in the Western manner, as “Sicheng Liang Qichao”, to show that as the eldest son he inherited all his father’s character and good name. To help him learn about Western art and architecture, Liang Qichao raised five thousand US dollars so that the newly married couple could return to China by way of Europe, combining a honeymoon with a study tour.⁠[23][11]

The route given in Jin Lei’s chronology is that from March to September 1928 the couple visited and studied buildings in Britain, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and France, and then returned to China across Siberia.⁠[5]

After returning to China in 1928 he accepted an invitation from Northeastern University to found its department of architecture in Shenyang and served as its head and as professor; it was the first architecture department in northern China (a 2024 article in Sixth Tone calls it the country’s second), and Lin Huiyin also taught in it.⁠[1][2][24][20][3][25]

Accounts of when he left Northeastern University differ: the chronology printed by the Beijing Evening News in 2001 gives his service there as 1928–1931, and a 2016 article in the Beijing Youth Daily says he left on the eve of the Mukden Incident of September 1931, and Lou Qingxi writes that he moved his family to Beiping after the Mukden Incident, when Japan occupied the Northeast; a 2021 article in the Beijing Evening News states that the couple returned to Beiping in 1930 because of Lin Huiyin’s pneumonia and unrest in the Northeast, and that after the Mukden Incident they lost their home in the Northeast together with its books, notes and survey records.⁠[1][24][26][3]

Jin Lei’s chronology dates his founding of the department of architecture at Northeastern University, and his appointment as its head, to September 1928; Lin Huiyin was the only other teacher of architecture who could be found at the time. On their home in Beiping, Chen Pu writes that after returning there in the autumn of 1928 the couple lived briefly at No. 2 Miliangku Hutong and then rented a courtyard house at No. 3 Beizongbu Hutong, where they stayed until 1937; Jin Lei’s chronology instead says that he left Northeastern University in June 1931 for Beijing and set up house at No. 3 Beizongbu Hutong.⁠[5][6]

Liang Qichao died in Beijing on January 19, 1929. Liang Sicheng, not yet 28, designed his father’s tomb garden and stele pavilion, his first architectural design after returning from his studies; Liang Qichao’s tomb lies east of the Temple of the Reclining Buddha at Xiangshan in Beijing, in the gymnosperm area of the Beijing Botanical Garden.⁠[26]

In August 1929 their first child, a daughter, Liang Zaibing, was born in Beijing; her name, Zaibing, honours Liang Qichao by echoing the name of his Yinbing Studio.⁠[26]

In November 1929 Liang Qichao’s tomb, designed by Liang Sicheng and built under his supervision, was completed east of the Temple of the Reclining Buddha at Xiangshan. Jin Lei’s chronology also records that in that year he designed a memorial to Wang Guowei.⁠[5]

In 1931 he joined the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture as head of its methods division (the 2001 chronology in the Beijing Evening News calls it the methods group and gives his tenure as lasting until 1946), and he was also a corresponding research fellow and an adjunct research fellow of the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica. From 1931 to 1937 the family lived at No. 3 Beizongbu Hutong in Beiping.⁠[2][1][26]

He led members of the society in surveying and measuring old buildings: in 1932 he measured the Guanyin Pavilion of the Dule Temple in Jixian and painted a watercolour elevation of it; in September 1933 he and Mo Zongjiang measured the Wooden Pagoda of Yingxian in Shanxi, and he also measured the Puxian Pavilion of the Shanhua Temple in Datong and the Zhaozhou Bridge in Hebei; in the 1930s he also surveyed and measured the old buildings of the Temple and Cemetery of Confucius at Qufu. He drew up restoration plans for the Temple of Confucius at Qufu, the Wenyuan Pavilion in the Palace Museum, the Wanchun Pavilion on Jingshan, the Liuhe Pagoda in Hangzhou and the Tengwang Pavilion in Nanchang.⁠[21][2][7]

Lou Qingxi writes that from April 1932 he surveyed the Liao-dynasty buildings of the Dule Temple in Jixian and wrote a detailed report, followed by papers on the old buildings of Zhengding and of Datong and on the great stone bridge of Zhaoxian. A 2023 article from China News Service states that in September 1933 he, Lin Huiyin and other members of the society made their first trip to Shanxi, with Datong as the first stop.⁠[3][27]

From the end of May to June 1, 1935, he, Lin Huiyin, Liu Dunzhen and others surveyed and measured the Longmen Grottoes in Henan. On May 30, 1937, the couple came to Xi’an at the invitation of Gu Zhutong to work on the repair of the Small Wild Goose Pagoda; on June 3 they went to Yaoxian to survey, and on June 6 they returned to Beiping to prepare for a journey to Shanxi.⁠[15]

Figures for the scale of the surveys differ: Tsinghua University’s 2021 exhibition and the excerpt from Liang Zaibing’s memoir give more than 2,000 old buildings from the Tang to the Qing dynasties surveyed and measured in more than 200 counties of 15 provinces; The World of Chinese gives 2,738 sites in 190 counties between 1930 and 1945; and the Beijing Evening News in 2021 gives more than 2,800.⁠[7][10][19][26]

Lou Qingxi writes that in 1934 he compiled Qingshi yingzao zeli, a study of Qing building regulations. In 1932 he and Lin Huiyin designed the Grey Building student dormitory of Peking University at Shatan.⁠[3][20]

In 1931 he returned to Beiping at the invitation of Zhu Qiqian to join the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture, becoming head of its methods division in September. The society first worked from Zhu Qiqian’s home at No. 1 Baozhuzi Hutong, west of Beizongbu Hutong, and later moved for a time to the western side halls inside Tiananmen.⁠[6][5]

In 1932–1933 he was a professor at Peking University, teaching the history of Chinese architecture, and in 1933–1934 he was also a professor at Tsinghua University, teaching architecture. In 1932 he published notes on buildings in the Beiping area, among them the pagoda of the Tianning Temple in Beijing; when the pagoda was restored in 1991, a stele found in its finial stated that it had been built in the Tianqing era of the Liao dynasty, confirming his dating of more than sixty years before.⁠[5][6]

In 1934 he became a member of the Central Commission for the Preservation of Antiquities, designed the Geology Building of Peking University with Lin Huiyin, and the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture, commissioned by the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica, began a detailed survey of the Palace Museum in Beiping, for which the institute paid it 5,000 yuan. In 1935 he designed a women’s dormitory for Peking University, was commissioned by Academia Sinica and the Ministry of Education to run the architectural design competitions for the Central Museum and the Central Library, and served as an adviser to the committee for the restoration of the relics of the old capital. In April 1936 he received the American architect and planner Clarence Stein and his wife in Beiping, and through Stein began to think about city planning.⁠[5]

In 1931 Xu Zhimo introduced Jin Yuelin to the Liang household, beginning a close friendship between Jin and Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin that lasted until their deaths.⁠[5]

Around noon on November 19, 1931, the plane carrying Xu Zhimo crashed outside Jinan. Lü Jiaxiang writes in the Qilu Evening News that Liang Sicheng, acting also for Lin Huiyin, went to the crash site at once and brought back a piece of the wreckage, which Lin Huiyin kept hanging on her bedroom wall until her death.⁠[28]

Lü Jiaxiang also writes that after Jin Yuelin declared his feelings for Lin Huiyin in 1932, Liang Sicheng said, in words that translate as “You are free; if you choose Lao Jin, I wish you happiness.” Jin afterwards lived next door to the couple, never married, and was trusted by them and their children alike.⁠[28]

In 1937 he and Lin Huiyin tracked down and surveyed the Foguang Temple on Mount Wutai in Shanxi and found Tang-dynasty inscriptions on a beam that confirmed the hall was built in 857; Lou Qingxi writes that Mo Zongjiang and others went with them. The 2023 China News Service article states that in the 1930s they made four trips to Shanxi, finally finding the Foguang Temple in 1937.⁠[29][19][3][27]

When the Marco Polo Bridge Incident broke out on July 7, 1937, the couple were still on Mount Wutai and did not know that war had reached Beiping; they learned of it only after riding mules out of the mountains on July 12.⁠[26]

After Beiping fell he took his family south through Changsha, Guiyang and Kunming, and finally to Lizhuang near Yibin in Sichuan. In Changsha a Japanese air raid struck near their lodgings and he carried his daughter out; on the way to Kunming, with Lin Huiyin seriously ill, he searched for lodgings and found space with a group of air-force cadets, whose graduation ceremony the couple later attended in Kunming as their family representatives.⁠[10][26]

Lou Qingxi writes that after a long journey the family reached Kunming in January 1938 and in 1939 moved again to the countryside at Lizhuang in Nanxi County, Sichuan; Liang Zaibing’s recollection has the family setting out from Yibin for Lizhuang only in December 1940. In 1939 he surveyed and measured the Gao Yi Que pillar-gates at Ya’an in Sichuan.⁠[3][10][21]

In 1939 floods in Tianjin submerged the society’s entire survey archive, which had been stored in the underground vault of the Chartered Bank there; the society’s president, Zhu Qiqian, at once had people sent to Tianjin to salvage it, and on that basis Liang and his colleagues redrew, copied and reorganised the society’s measured drawings of old buildings from the previous seven years. Liang Zaibing recalls that on hearing the news her parents all but broke down in tears.⁠[10]

Liang Zaibing recalls that on the morning of December 13, 1940, the family set out from Yibin for Lizhuang in a small wooden boat, and that they lived in Lizhuang for five and a half years, leaving only in the summer of 1946. She recalls 1941–1942 as the hardest period for the family since leaving Beiping: her father, only 40, had lost much of his energy and was badly stooped, drawing at night by the family’s best light, a hurricane lamp, with his chin propped on a vase; he also learned to steam buns, cook rice, prepare dishes and make preserves, and the family lived by pawning and selling clothes. In 1942 he endured severe spinal pain while spending much time travelling about to seek support, to feed the family and keep the society going.⁠[10][26]

In Lizhuang the society produced two issues of its Bulletin, volume 7, number 1 (1944) and number 2 (1945), in 200 copies each. In the spring of 1943 he and Lin Huiyin asked John King Fairbank and Wilma Fairbank to help have their drawings microfilmed so that they could be printed in the United States.⁠[10]

In 1944–1945 he was deputy director of the Ministry of Education’s Committee for the Preservation of Cultural Relics in War Zones. Li Hui wrote in the Beijing Evening News in 2001 that during the Second World War Liang worked to keep Nara in Japan from being bombed, regarding its Tōshōdai-ji temple as the best-preserved Tang-period building he knew.⁠[1]

In September 1937 he and Lin Huiyin left Beiping with their two children and Lin Huiyin’s mother and, after four months on the road through Hunan, Guizhou and elsewhere, reached Kunming in January 1938. In 1938 Liu Dunzhen, Liu Zhiping, Mo Zongjiang, Chen Mingda and others arrived in Kunming one after another and the society resumed its work there; the American architectural magazine Pencil Point published a paper of his in two parts, in its January and March 1938 issues.⁠[5]

In 1939 a hardening of the soft tissue of his spine kept him in bed for nearly half a year; in August he went with Liu Dunzhen, Mo Zongjiang and Chen Mingda to survey old buildings in Sichuan. That year the National Central Museum appointed him director of its committee for compiling historical materials on Chinese architecture, and he also became a member of the Sichuan provincial commission for the preservation of antiquities. In 1940 they finished a simple house of their own design at Longtou Village near Kunming; in November that year Academia Sinica moved to Lizhuang in Nanxi County, Sichuan. He also gave a series of lectures on the development and characteristics of traditional Chinese architecture at National Central University in Chongqing. In 1941 he began to concentrate on the Song-dynasty Yingzao fashi, completing most of its explanatory drawings over the following years.⁠[5]

In 1944 he compiled for the government and the Allied (American) forces a list of historic buildings in occupied areas, marking their positions on military maps, and recommended that the American forces spare the historic Japanese cities of Kyoto and Nara in the war.⁠[5]

Lin Heng, Lin Huiyin’s younger half-brother and an air-force pilot, was killed on March 14, 1941, aged 25, in an air battle with Japanese aircraft over Shuangliu near Chengdu. Liang Sicheng did not tell Lin Huiyin at once, but used a work trip to Chongqing to go to Chengdu and collect Lin Heng’s belongings: a dress uniform and the ceremonial Zhongzheng sword issued to him on graduation.⁠[30]

The 2025 article from the Shuangliu media centre quotes Liang Congjie’s recollection that his father hurried to Chengdu, took charge of Lin Heng’s body and buried it in an unmarked grave, whose location was still unknown when the article appeared.⁠[30]

During the war he completed the first history of Chinese architecture written by a Chinese scholar; Lou Qingxi writes that he began writing it in 1944, and The World of Chinese states that the couple published it in 1944. Sixth Tone wrote in 2024 that Lin Huiyin largely wrote its sections on the Liao and Song dynasties; The World of Chinese states that she finished the chapters on the Song, Liao and Jin dynasties.⁠[24][31][3][19][25]

In the same years, despite his spinal injury, he wrote A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture in English for foreign readers, completing the English manuscript in 1946. In 1944 he also prepared a mimeographed set of lectures on two “grammar books” of Chinese architecture.⁠[16][24][21][2]

Jin Lei’s chronology dates the start of his History of Chinese Architecture to 1942. In 1943 Joseph Needham, cultural counsellor of the British embassy, travelled from Chongqing to Lizhuang to visit Academia Sinica and also visited the society.⁠[5]

On March 9, 1945, he wrote to Mei Yiqi, president of Tsinghua University, proposing a department of architecture. In 1946 Tsinghua formally established a department of architectural engineering with Liang as its head and Wu Liangyong as teaching assistant; he taught at Tsinghua from then on and headed the department until 1972.⁠[21][32][2][1]

While he was in the United States the preparatory work for the new department fell mainly to Lin Huiyin. The Pennsylvania Gazette wrote in 2004 that Tsinghua follows much of the Cret-influenced curriculum he brought back from Penn. At Tsinghua he taught Chinese and foreign architectural history, an introductory course on architecture for new students and design for the lower years, continuing to teach in person despite heavy administrative and design work.⁠[20][14][7]

In October 1945 he published an essay on the system and order of towns in Ta Kung Pao, putting forward the social ideals of a home for every resident and a bed for every person, expressing the hope that universities would add departments of architecture and of town planning, and calling a settled home and livelihood the highest aim of city planning.⁠[5]

In 1946 he went to the United States on a study visit, and in October that year Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry engaged him to lecture (the 2001 chronology in the Beijing Evening News calls him an adjunct professor at Yale University, and Lou Qingxi’s biography lists him as a visiting professor); The Pennsylvania Gazette wrote in 2019 that in 1947 he was a visiting fellow at Yale University.⁠[20][3][1][16][13]

At the beginning of 1947 the United NationsUnited NationsThe United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945 under the Charter of the United Nations. It has 193 Member States, and its headquarters are in New York City.Open the full entry assembled a Board of Design under Wallace K. Harrison in an office at Rockefeller Center; its ten architects from different countries included Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, and Liang represented China, appearing in the United Nations archives as “Ssu-ch’eng Liang”. The board produced 50 schemes, which were criticised and reworked collectively. Lou Qingxi writes that in 1947 the Chinese government sent him to the United States as China’s adviser on the consultants’ board for the design of the headquarters.⁠[33][34][1][3]

Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry awarded him an honorary doctorate of letters, which the China Science Daily article attributes to his outstanding contribution to the study of ancient Chinese architecture; the 2001 chronology in the Beijing Evening News and Lou Qingxi’s biography both list it under 1946–1947. Song Yu writes in the abstract of a 2023 paper in the Journal of Architectural History that in March 1947 he took part in the Conference on Planning Man’s Physical Environment held by Princeton University. The Pennsylvania Gazette notes that his curriculum vitae lists an honorary degree from Princeton University in 1947 and that the University of Pennsylvania did not give him one.⁠[16][1][3][35][13]

On the family’s return to Beiping, the Beijing Evening News wrote in 2021 that in July 1947 the family of five flew back to Beiping after nine years away, first staying in a house of the National Southwestern Associated University inside Xuanwu Gate and moving, once the Tsinghua campus had been repaired, into No. 8 Xinlinyuan there.⁠[26]

In October 1946 he went to the United States to study post-war American architectural education and, at the invitation of Yale University, taught a course on the history of Chinese art, covering architecture and sculpture, as a visiting professor; in the same year the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture ceased work and set up an institute of Chinese architecture jointly with Tsinghua University. In February 1947 the Chinese government named him its representative on the board of consulting architects for the United Nations headquarters, and in April Princeton University invited him to lead an international conference on Far Eastern culture and society.⁠[5]

In conferring the honorary doctorate, Princeton University called him “a creative architect who has also been a teacher of architectural history,” “a pioneer in historical research and exploration in Chinese architecture and planning” and “a leader in the restoration and preservation of the priceless monuments of his country.”⁠[36]

In July 1947 he visited Cranbrook, where he met the architect Saarinen and his son to discuss architectural education, and Taliesin, where he met Frank Lloyd Wright to discuss architectural theory; he returned to China from the United States that month. Chen Pu writes that the family came back from Sichuan to Beiping and to Tsinghua in the summer of 1946 and moved into No. 8 Xinlinyuan, and that Liang at once threw himself into preparing the new department. In December 1947 he, Chen Mengjia and Deng Yizhe wrote jointly to Mei Yiqi with a plan for a research office in art history, proposing that Tsinghua University set up a department and research office of art history; that year he also wrote the entry on Chinese architecture and art for the Encyclopedia Americana.⁠[5][6]

In 1948 he and Liang Siyong were both elected to the first class of academicians of Academia Sinica. That year he also gave a lecture at Tsinghua on engineering and the humanities, calling for the two to be joined.⁠[2][24][32]

Liu Dongping, writing in the Beijing Evening News in 2001, relays Luo Zhewen’s recollection that at the end of 1948, as the People’s Liberation Army besieged Beiping, Zhang Xiruo brought two army cadres to Liang’s home late at night to ask him to mark on a military map the important historic buildings that should be spared from shelling, and that he and Lin Huiyin circled them in red pencil. Before the Pingjin Campaign he also compiled a national list of historic buildings and cultural relics for the army.⁠[1][16][13]

Chen Pu dates the visit to an evening in late December 1948, when Zhang Xiruo brought two PLA officers to the couple at No. 8 Xinlinyuan, and writes that Liang afterwards had teachers of the architecture department compile a brief list of important historic buildings across the country and notes on protecting old buildings, which were delivered to the PLA and later became the first draft of two documents issued by the State Council in 1961: the first list of nationally important protected cultural-heritage sites and the provisional regulations on the protection and management of cultural relics.⁠[6]

In 1949 Tsinghua’s university council renamed the department of architectural engineering the department of building engineering, with Liang still as its head. He also became deputy director of the Beijing Urban Planning Commission; Tsinghua University’s 2021 commemorative exhibition showed his working notes from 1954, when he held that post.⁠[32][2]

At the founding of the People’s Republic of China he took part in choosing the national flag and anthem, and from September 1949 ten teachers of Tsinghua’s architecture department, he among them, were charged with designing the national emblem.⁠[2][20]

In February 1950 he and Chen Zhanxiang submitted a proposal on the location of the administrative centre of the Central People’s Government, known as the Liang–Chen Plan, which called for a new administrative district in the western suburbs outside the old city of Beijing so that the old city could be preserved; the plan was not adopted.⁠[31][32][37]

The Pennsylvania Gazette wrote in 2019 that he drafted an urban development plan for Beijing in 1949 under which the old city was to become a public park, and that Mao Zedong rejected the proposal, pledging to remake the city into “a forest of smokestacks”.⁠[13]

He led Tsinghua’s national-emblem design group, whose members, teachers in the department of building engineering, included Lin Huiyin, Mo Zongjiang, Li Zongjin, Zhu Changzhong, Wang Guoyu, Hu Yunjing, Zhang Changling and Luo Zhewen. When a political consultative meeting discussed the emblem proposals in June 1950, both Tsinghua’s design and that of a group from the Central Academy of Fine Arts were praised, and the two groups were asked to combine their strengths; Liang called his team together at his home at No. 8 Xinlinyuan on the Tsinghua campus to pass on Premier Zhou Enlai’s request that Tiananmen and ears of wheat and rice be added, and a new round of design began. On June 20 a review group chaired by Zhou Enlai chose the Tsinghua design, and on June 23 the plenary session of the second session of the First National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, chaired by Mao Zedong, approved the emblem by vote.⁠[38][32][2]

On August 29, 1951, he wrote to Peng Zhen with suggestions for the design of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, and from 1952 he led the work of designing it. The Pennsylvania Gazette wrote in 2019 that the obelisk, which stands in Tiananmen Square, was designed by him and Lin Huiyin and completed three years after her death.⁠[21][32][13]

In 1952 he joined the China Democratic League and was elected to the standing committee of its central committee.⁠[2]

He argued that Beijing should be chiefly a political and cultural centre rather than an industrial city, that the Forbidden City should be strictly protected and that buildings inside the old walls should be limited to two or three storeys; Wen Jing wrote in the Beijing Evening News in 2001 that he wanted the city walls kept and turned into a ring of parks for culture and recreation. He also petitioned repeatedly and saved the Round City at Beihai.⁠[7][1][24]

In May 1953 he opposed the demolition of Beijing’s ceremonial archways and clashed fiercely with the deputy mayor, Wu Han; at a State Council meeting he broke down in tears during the argument. He declared to the mayor, Peng Zhen, in words that translate as “On these questions I am the progressive one and you are the backward one,” and said that in fifty years history would prove Peng wrong and him right. Beijing’s old walls and almost all of its gates were destroyed between 1951 and the early years of the Cultural Revolution; he said, in words that translate as “Pulling down a gate tower is like cutting out a piece of my flesh; stripping the bricks from the outer wall is like flaying off a layer of my skin.”⁠[24][31]

Li Hui wrote in the Beijing Evening News in 2001 that in the 1950s, on learning that a Liao-dynasty temple in Baodi that he had surveyed had been demolished, Liang exclaimed, in words that translate as “I too am a piece of Liao-dynasty timber!”⁠[1]

Jin Lei’s chronology of 2021 dates his joining the China Democratic League to 1953.⁠[5]

In 1952 he designed the tomb of Ren Bishi. Yuan Fan writes that after 1949 he took part in the design of only four projects, among them the Monument to the People’s Heroes (1952), the tomb of Ren Bishi (1952) and the tomb of Lin Huiyin (1955).⁠[39]

In June 1954 he founded and became editor-in-chief of the Architectural Journal, the first academic journal in the field of architecture after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and in September he was elected a deputy to the First National People’s Congress. In June–July 1956 he visited Poland as deputy head of a delegation of the Architectural Society of China, and in October he became director of the Research Office for Architectural History and Theory set up jointly by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University. In 1957 he went with Zheng Zhenduo and Luo Zhewen to inspect the Ling’en Hall of the Changling tomb among the Ming Tombs after it had been set on fire by lightning, and recommended fitting lightning rods to historic buildings.⁠[5]

Lin Huiyin died of tuberculosis in Beijing on April 1, 1955, aged 51; her memorial service was held on April 3 at the Xianliang Temple in Jinyu Hutong. A 2020 article in Jiemian writes that her death cost him his emotional mainstay and comrade in arms and that he made no further major contribution to architecture afterwards.⁠[20][40]

In 1955 he was elected to the first group of members of the academic divisions of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in the Division of Philosophy and Social Sciences. From 1955, too, a nationwide campaign criticised his views on architecture.⁠[2][32][16][41]

Jin Lei’s chronology of 2021 has him elected in June 1955 to the first group of members of the Division of Technical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.⁠[5]

He designed Lin Huiyin’s tomb at the Babaoshan cemetery in Beijing, whose headstone is a carved trial piece of the wreath relief she had designed for the base of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, inscribed “Tomb of the architect Lin Huiyin.”⁠[39][22][42]

In 1956 he asked, through Premier Zhou Enlai, for Chairman Mao Zedong to receive his application to join the Communist Party of China; he was admitted in 1959, his application having been endorsed in writing by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. He was a deputy to the first three National People’s Congresses and also served as vice-president of the Architectural Society of China, vice-chairman of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a member of the standing committee of its National Committee and a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.⁠[2]

On February 6, 1956, he wrote to Mao Zedong expressing his wish to join the Party and asked Zhou Enlai to pass on the letter; the same day Zhou noted, in words that translate as “Liang Sicheng’s letter asking to join the Party: send to the Chairman at once.” On February 24 Mao wrote, in words that translate as “I think Liang Sicheng can be admitted to the Party; refer it to the Beijing Municipal Committee for consideration.” On February 25 Peng Zhen wrote to Fan Rusheng, secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee, and Jiang Nanxiang, Party secretary and president of Tsinghua University, among others, in words that translate as “Liang has also raised this with me in person, and I did not give him a direct answer. Please study and deal with it at once.” In May 1956 he submitted a 23-page application to the Party secretary of the architecture department. On January 8, 1959, at the age of 58, he was admitted as a probationary member of the Communist Party of China; he said, in words that translate as “The second youth of my life has begun!”⁠[43]

In July 1958, as deputy head of the Architectural Society of China’s delegation, he attended the Fifth Congress of the International Union of Architects in Moscow and gave, on behalf of Asia, a report on the building and reconstruction of cities in the countries of East Asia from 1945 to 1957; in August and September he visited Czechoslovakia, again as deputy head of a delegation of the society.⁠[5]

In April 1960 he attended the third enlarged meeting of the academic divisions of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, which discussed plans for theoretical research; in August he was elected a member of the third committee of the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles.⁠[5]

On June 17, 1962, he married Lin Zhu, who was 27 years his junior. Luo Yu writes in the Xinmin Evening News that Lin Zhu first met Lin Huiyin in 1948, when she was 20, and that the difference in age and learning between them drew much criticism of his remarriage.⁠[5][44]

A 2012 report in the Peninsula Morning News states that his family opposed the marriage, his eldest daughter persuading her uncles and aunts to write jointly against it, and that the gap in age and status made Lin Zhu the object of much controversy. Lin Zhu said that most of the years she shared with Liang fell in the Cultural Revolution, in words that translate as “ten years of pain and terror.”⁠[45]

In 1962 he resumed his research on the Song-dynasty Yingzao fashi with his assistants, completing the first volume of that work in 1965.⁠[3]

The year 1963 marked the 1,200th anniversary of the death of the Tang monk Jianzhen. Because the project called for the highest mastery of historic Chinese architecture and bore on relations between China and Japan, the Buddhist Association of China invited him to lead the design of a memorial hall. In the summer of 1963 he and Chen Congzhou, a specialist in historic gardens and buildings at Tongji University, surveyed the site in Yangzhou, checking Chen’s measured drawings of the Daming Temple against the site to work out the overall design; in October that year a commemoration was held at the Daming Temple and the foundation stone of the hall was laid.⁠[39]

The hall was modelled on the Golden Hall of the Tōshōdai-ji in Nara; because the site was not spacious enough, he reduced the Golden Hall’s seven bays across and four deep to five across and three deep. Because of political, economic and other factors the project was not carried out at once; work resumed only in March 1973, after his death, the hall being completed that November; the technical design and construction drawings were finished by Professor Zhang Zhizhong of the Nanjing Institute of Technology and the Yangzhou construction bureau. In 1984 the hall won a national first prize for excellent architectural design.⁠[39][3]

From September to November 1963, as deputy head of a delegation of Chinese architects, he attended the Seventh Congress of the International Union of Architects and a world meeting of young architects in Havana, Cuba, and the union’s Eighth Assembly in Mexico, and visited Brazil at the invitation of its institute of architects.⁠[5]

In April 1964 he and Lin Zhu went to Jixian to arrange a new survey of the Dule Temple and examined its buildings. At the first session of the Third National People’s Congress, from December 1964 to January 1965, he was elected a member of its Standing Committee.⁠[5]

In July 1965, as deputy head of a delegation of Chinese architects, he attended the Eighth Congress and Ninth Assembly of the International Union of Architects in Paris.⁠[5]

In the Cultural Revolution he was regarded as a reactionary academic authority and subjected to struggle sessions. Around mid-September 1966 Red Guards broke open his gate and searched his home; they found a ceremonial sword that the air-force academy had issued, in the name of its honorary president Chiang Kai-shek, to Lin Heng, Lin Huiyin’s younger half-brother, on his graduation, and Liang was accused on that account of being a Kuomintang sleeper agent and confined, cut off from the outside world, in a hall of Tsinghua’s architecture department. The Beijing Youth Daily wrote in 2016 that he was attacked as an example of revivalism, that his home was searched and that all the books and papers he had collected were confiscated.⁠[41][31][24][30]

In November 1968, after long mistreatment, his heart was failing and his life was in danger; after Lin Zhu had written repeatedly to the authorities and Zhou Enlai had intervened in person, he was taken to Beijing Hospital for emergency treatment on November 17, but once his condition had stabilised a little he was taken back to the Tsinghua campus for further struggle sessions. By then he was too weak to stand or walk and could no longer hold a pen, and the self-criticisms he was required to write even during treatment were written for him by Lin Zhu. He said, in words that translate as “It looks now as though I will not get through the Cultural Revolution!”⁠[41][5]

The Pennsylvania Gazette wrote in 2019 that in the Cultural Revolution he was deemed a counter-revolutionary and sent to the countryside for re-education, and that Lin Zhu hid his notes and drawings to keep them from being confiscated; they later formed his posthumous A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture.⁠[13]

The Paper wrote in 2015 that he shed no tears in the Cultural Revolution yet wept silently before the levelled remains of Beijing’s city walls, and that on his deathbed he urged Chen Zhanxiang, in words that translate as “However great the setbacks on life’s road, one must be loyal to one’s country …”⁠[31]

He died of illness in Beijing at dawn on January 9, 1972.⁠[1][32][41]

In keeping with his wishes, his large collection of books and papers was given to Tsinghua University’s department of architecture after his death. Lin Zhu was 44 when he died and did not remarry; a year after his death she began to put his manuscripts in order and to edit and write books about him, work she continued for forty years. Shu Yi writes that Liang died during the Cultural Revolution and that his ashes were not buried in the cemetery where Lin Huiyin lies.⁠[3][44][42]

His wife, Lin Huiyin (1904–1955), studied with him at the University of Pennsylvania; The Pennsylvania Gazette calls her his longtime collaborator. A 2020 article in Jiemian writes that he thought of himself as a plodding craftsman and asked Lin Huiyin to polish many of his articles, and that on survey trips, having only one camera, she left him the chance to photograph the bracket sets. In a letter to Wilma Fairbank, Lin Huiyin described him as slow-paced and inclined to do one thing at a time.⁠[46][40][20][13][42]

His daughter, Liang Zaibing, lived with her parents in Lizhuang until 1946; in October 2021 China Architecture & Building Press published her oral memoir of her parents, written down by Yu Kui.⁠[10][26]

His son, Liang Congjie, was born in 1932 and became a historian and a publisher’s editor; he interpreted for Deng Xiaoping at meetings with American delegations in 1979 and 1980, in 1993 led the founding of Friends of Nature, the first wholly non-governmental environmental organisation in China, and took part in anti-poaching work in Hoh Xil. The World of Chinese states that he translated A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture into Chinese.⁠[26][24][19]

His second wife, Lin Zhu, joined the History of Chinese Architecture compilation group of Tsinghua’s architecture department as a draughtswoman in 1953, a group that he directed. In 1959 Wu Liangyong asked her to help him put the papers in his home in order; she had by then divorced her first husband, and the two grew close and later married.⁠[37][41]

He was Liang Qichao’s eldest son. A 2007 article by Li Xisuo lists Liang Qichao’s nine children: the eldest son, Liang Sicheng (1901–1972); the second son, Liang Siyong (1904–1954), an archaeologist; the third son, Liang Sizhong (1907–1932), who studied at an American military academy and on his return served as an artillery officer in the 19th Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army before dying young of illness; the fourth son, Liang Sida (born 1912), an economist and business-administration specialist who worked for many years in banking and business administration; the fifth son, Liang Sili (born 1924), a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and of the International Academy of Astronautics; the eldest daughter, Liang Sishun (1893–1966), who long accompanied her husband in his diplomatic work and was highly accomplished in literature and music; the second daughter, Liang Sizhuang (1908–1986), a librarian who worked for many years at the Peking University Library; the third daughter, Liang Siyi (1914–1988), a public figure and member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference; and the fourth daughter, Liang Sining (born 1916), who served in the New Fourth Army.⁠[11]

His son, Liang Congjie, died in Beijing on October 28, 2010, aged 78.⁠[47]

A list of his writings printed by the Beijing Evening News in 2001 gives 33 titles, among them studies of the Buddhist temples and palaces of the Tang dynasty, of the gate of the Dule Temple in Jixian, of the old buildings of Zhengding and of Datong, of Northern Wei architecture as shown in the Yungang Grottoes and of the great stone bridge of Zhaoxian, together with essays on the characteristics of Chinese architecture, the historical stages of its development, Chinese Buddhist architecture and the Tōshōdai-ji in Japan in relation to Tang architecture, and the first volume of his annotated Yingzao fashi. In 1951 he wrote the manuscript of an essay calling Beijing an unrivalled masterpiece of city planning, and in 1963 an unfinished draft of the preface to his annotation of the Song-dynasty Yingzao fashi.⁠[1][2][21]

A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture: A Study of the Development of Its Structural System and the Evolution of Its Types, edited by Wilma Fairbank and published under the name Liang Ssu-ch’eng, appeared from MITMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It received its charter from Massachusetts in 1861, admitted its first students in 1865 and moved from Boston to its present campus in 1916. As of October 2025 it had 11,816 students, and it counts 106 Nobel laureates among members of its community.Open the full entry Press in Cambridge, MassachusettsMassachusettsMassachusetts (officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital and largest city is Boston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on February 6, 1788, the sixth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 7,029,917.Open the full entry, in 1984 (xxiv + 200 pages), after both he and Lin Huiyin had died. The Pennsylvania Gazette wrote in 2004 that it became a seminal text and that he did not live to see its impact.⁠[48][10][14]

The list of writings attached to Lou Qingxi’s biography includes, by year: studies of the Buddhist temples and palaces of the Tang dynasty (Bulletin of the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture, vol. 3, no. 1, March 1932), of the gate of the Dule Temple in Jixian (vol. 3, no. 2, June 1932) and of the Hall of the Three Great Bodhisattvas of the Guangji Temple in Baodi (same issue); reports on the old buildings of Zhengding (vol. 4, April 1933), on Northern Wei architecture as shown in the Yungang Grottoes (vol. 4, December 1933) and on the old buildings of Datong (with Liu Dunzhen, vol. 4, December 1933); the great stone bridge of Zhaoxian (vol. 5, no. 1, March 1934); the Qingshi yingzao zeli (separate volume, 1934); a plan for restoring the Liuhe Pagoda in Hangzhou (vol. 5, no. 3, March 1935); the architecture and repair plan of the Temple of Confucius at Qufu (vol. 6, no. 1, September 1935); the History of Chinese Architecture (separate volume, 1945); a preface to an outline of city planning (separate volume, 1951); essays on Chinese architecture and Chinese architects (Cultural Relics, 1953, no. 10), on the characteristics of Chinese architecture (Architectural Journal, 1954, no. 1) and on the historical stages of its development (with Lin Huiyin and Mo Zongjiang, Architectural Journal, 1954, no. 2); a report on the building and reconstruction of East Asian cities to a congress of the International Union of Architects in 1958; essays on important questions of architectural creation (Architectural Journal, 1961, no. 7), on Chinese Buddhist architecture (Journal of Tsinghua University, 1961), on the restoration and maintenance of historic buildings (Cultural Relics, 1963, no. 7) and on the Tōshōdai-ji in Japan and Tang Chinese architecture (Jianzhen memorial volume, 1963).⁠[3]

Works published after his death include his annotated Yingzao fashi (1983), the English A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture (1984), a bilingual Chinese–English edition of the Pictorial History edited in English by Wilma Fairbank, translated by Liang Congjie and checked by Sun Zengfan (China Architecture & Building Press, 1991), and a Chinese edition published in Taiwan (1991). His Complete Works, launched on April 20, 2001, run to nine volumes and some 4.45 million characters.⁠[3][49]

Tsinghua University’s 2021 exhibition quotes several of his sayings, which translate as “Architecture is the crystallisation of a nation’s culture and, still more, the symbol of a nation’s culture”; that old buildings should be restored “to remain as old as they were”; and “To specialise and yet be versatile, to master one thing and yet learn broadly: this is the cultivation each of us should have in study.”⁠[7]

Joseph Needham called him the master of the history of Chinese architecture. Encyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry writes that before the research he undertook with Lin Huiyin, Liu Dunzhen and others, no one knew which buildings were truly old and which were new. Tsinghua University describes him as one of the founders of modern architectural education in China, and a book on the Liang Sicheng Architecture Prize compiled by the Architectural Society of China calls him, in words that translate as “the founder and pioneer in action of the ideas and methods of cultural-heritage protection in China”. The excerpt from Liang Zaibing’s memoir notes that he is called the father of modern Chinese architecture.⁠[16][46][2][7][10]

Nancy Steinhardt said in 2004 that he was “almost like a cult figure”, and in 2019 she summed up his roles as architect, educator, academic, historic preservationist and pioneer of fieldwork and restoration.⁠[14][13]

Lai Delin wrote in the April 2001 issue of Twenty-First Century that Liang was, in words that translate as “without doubt the most outstanding pioneer” in the history of modern Chinese architecture. The article also sets out other scholars’ criticisms: Han Baode, in a 1988 book on Ming and Qing architecture, held that the study of Chinese architectural history must, even in simplified form, be divided into northern and southern traditions, and that for decades the view of Ming and Qing palace architecture had suffered from an error of structural functionalism; Xia Zhujiu, in a 1990 paper analysing the theoretical construction of Liang’s architectural history and the society, argued that it had unconsciously reduced the social and historical construction of space and produced an unsocial and unhistorical account.⁠[50]

In April 2001 the centenary of his birth was marked by China’s architectural community, and the Beijing Evening News printed a feature on him. On April 20 a symposium for the centenary and the launch of his Complete Works were held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, with speeches by Chen Zhili, Yu Zhengsheng, He Meiying (Party secretary of Tsinghua University), Wu Liangyong and, for the family, Liang Zaibing.⁠[18][1][49][51]

In 2018 the exhibition The Rise of Modernity: The First Generation of Chinese Architects from the University of Pennsylvania, presenting 20 Chinese architects who studied at Penn between 1918 and 1937, he among them, was shown at the Shanghai Contemporary Art Museum; curated by Tong Ming, it had first been shown in Nanjing under the title Foundation.⁠[52]

From August 10 to October 20, 2021, the Tsinghua University Art Museum held a documentary exhibition for the 120th anniversary of his birth, with 362 items in five sections (studies, historical research, planning and conservation, architectural design, and education), curated by Su Dan. On December 15, 2021, a commemorative exhibition for the same anniversary, with 20 display panels and 30 objects, opened in the Tsinghua University history museum.⁠[21][7][2]

The courtyard at No. 24 Beizongbu Hutong in Beijing is known as the former residence of Liang and Lin; The Paper wrote in 2015 that it narrowly escaped demolition in 2009 and was kept, was taken down in 2012 in what was termed a demolition for maintenance, and that the Dongcheng District cultural authorities said they would rebuild it as it had been.⁠[31]

In 1987 he and the research group he had led received the first prize of the State Natural Science Award from the State Science and Technology Commission for their work on the theory of ancient Chinese architecture and the protection of historic buildings.⁠[3]

The Liang Sicheng Architecture Prize, named after him, was established in 2000 by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Architectural Society of China; it is awarded every two years to two laureates, and the ceremony for the tenth and eleventh prizes was held at the Palace Museum on April 28, 2023.⁠[53]

Tsinghua University: Official website: https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

United Nations: Official website: https://www.un.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[34]