Liang Sishun

Liang Sishun was born in 1893. Her courtesy name was Lingxian, her family’s native place was Xinhui in Guangdong, and she was the eldest daughter of Liang Qichao. Her mother was Li Huixian.⁠[1][2][3]

In 1908 she went to Japan with her father to study. In one of her articles she recalled that her mother, Li Huixian, calmly settled the family’s affairs, then left Shanghai with the family and joined the exile in Japan, where she took charge of the children’s education. Accounts differ on when her father began teaching her: a 2022 article by Cheng Cheng says she was taught by her father from childhood, while Sudo Mizuyo, drawing on her own words, writes that she began to be taught by her father only at 17 and had been taught by her mother until then.⁠[1][3][2]

While Liang Qichao was in exile in Japan and could not at first find a suitable school for her, he taught her himself, even marking her compositions until the early hours. A 2007 article by Li Xisuo says she graduated from a women’s normal school in Japan. She was fluent in Japanese and, during her father’s exile in Japan, served as his assistant, secretary and Japanese interpreter.⁠[4][5][6]

Yiheng Guan (Yiheng Studio) was the name her father gave to her study. While learning ci poetry from Mai Menghua, she copied about 2,000 ci poems from the Tang and Five Dynasties to the end of the Qing (leaving out the Yuan and Ming) from the anthologies and collections in the family library and gave them to Mai Menghua, who checked and chose among them; the final selection of 676 poems became the Yiheng Guan Ci Xuan (Yiheng Studio Anthology of Ci Poetry). It was first published in the 34th year of the Guangxu reign (1908).⁠[2]

The anthology is arranged by the stages of the history of ci in four juan — A (Tang and Five Dynasties), B (Northern Song), C (Southern Song) and D (the Qing and recent poets) — with a fifth, E, added later as a supplement; the Yuan and Ming were left out as a period of decline with few major poets. The book also contains comments on the poems by Liang Qichao and Mai Menghua, in which Cheng Cheng sees a fairly clear influence of the Changzhou school. Cheng Cheng regards the anthology as in fact a joint selection by teacher and pupil, Mai Menghua and Liang, reflecting the leaning of father, daughter and Mai Menghua towards the Changzhou school of ci; the views she set out in her own preface, he writes, show that she meant the selection to display and put into practice her father’s ideas on ci. He regards the anthology as representative of the general anthologies of ci from all periods compiled in the later phase of modern ci studies.⁠[2]

In 1915 she married Zhou Xizhe, a student of her father. Zhou Xizhe was an overseas Chinese from Malaysia from a poor family who had worked on merchant ships; with the support and help of Kang YouweiKang YouweiKang Youwei (1858–1927) was a Chinese scholar, political reformer and calligrapher of the late Qing and early Republican periods and a principal promoter of the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898. After the reform was reversed he spent more than a decade in exile, founded the Baohuanghui (Chinese Empire Reform Association) and argued for constitutional monarchy; in later life he campaigned to make Confucianism the state religion. His works include The Forged Classics, Confucius as a Reformer and the Datong shu (The Great Commonwealth).Open the full entry he went to study at Columbia UniversityColumbia UniversityColumbia University, formally Columbia University in the City of New York, is a private research university in New York City and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1754 by royal charter from King George II as King's College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in New York State and the fifth oldest in the United States. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 and adopted the university name and moved to Manhattan's Morningside Heights in 1896. It has 17 schools and four affiliated colleges, with 35,978 students enrolled in fall 2025. Legal scholar Jennifer L. Mnookin became president on July 1, 2026.Open the full entry 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 and earned a doctorate in international law.⁠[1][7]

The match was arranged by Liang Qichao: Sudo Mizuyo writes that she married Zhou Xizhe on her father’s recommendation, infers from this that she herself perhaps did not question this way of marrying, and judges that both Liang Qichao and Liang Sishun kept a certain distance from free love; and Li Xisuo writes that the marriages of Liang Sishun and Liang SichengLiang SichengLiang Sicheng (1901–1972) was a Chinese architect, architectural historian and architectural educator, the eldest son of Liang Qichao and the husband of Lin Huiyin. With Lin Huiyin and others he carried out extensive field surveys and studies of China’s historic buildings, pioneered architectural education at Northeastern University and Tsinghua University, and after 1949 led the design of the national emblem of the People’s Republic of China and of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, while putting forward plans for preserving the old city of Beijing.Open the full entry both came about through their father’s introductions followed by courtship of the children’s own choosing. Liang Qichao later wrote to her that he was enormously pleased with their marriages and thought his method excellent: he observed and settled on a person and introduced them, and the final decision was theirs — “truly an ideal marriage system”, in his words as rendered here. He thought highly of Zhou Xizhe, judging that his talents would let him stand on his own either as a diplomat or in business, and asked his daughter in a letter, in words that translate as: “Good child, what do you think of Xizhe? Your old father has a good eye, hasn’t he?”⁠[3][5][7][8]

Sudo Mizuyo, who holds a doctorate from the University of Tokyo, judges that by 1915 Liang Sishun clearly advocated the ideal of the good wife and wise mother. In an article written for a women’s magazine, “Respectfully Recounting the Old Virtues of My Family, in Congratulation of a Women’s Magazine”, she described her grandmother and her mother: her grandmother was gentle, cared devotedly for her grandfather and ran a “school” at home for the unmarried girls of the village, teaching them embroidery, reading and writing; she asserted that her father’s character had been formed entirely by her late grandmother’s influence and training; and her mother, Li Huixian, was likewise a virtuous wife. From this Sudo Mizuyo concludes that Li Huixian both ran the household and was responsible for the children’s education.⁠[3]

In another article, “What I Hope for the Women of Our Country”, she set out four points of her view: women too need education; schools should give an education for good wives and wise mothers, based on the idea of a woman’s “heavenly duty” — a good wife helps her husband, a wise mother teaches her children; a wife should be her husband’s spiritual support, helping him by guiding him onto the right path and encouraging his spirit; and the role of women as mothers is central, since raising children means forming citizens and decides the quality of the nation’s citizens. Sudo Mizuyo points out that Liang Qichao’s writings on women never used terms such as “good wife and wise mother” and never held that women should be men’s spiritual support; although he spoke of a woman helping her husband above and teaching her children below, what helping the husband meant remained abstract, whereas Liang Sishun interpreted it as spiritual help. Sudo Mizuyo also notes that both father and daughter avoided mentioning the existence of Liang Qichao’s second wife, Wang Guiquan.⁠[3]

Liang Qichao had first intended to take Liang Tingxian to Beijing, but this fell through; on her suggestion, Liang Tingcan, a clansman of the next generation, went in his place, as Liang Qichao’s letter to her of February 28, 1916 and his letter to his second brother of mid-May 1916 show. In the spring of 1916 Liang Qichao secretly left Beijing for the south; passing through Hong Kong in mid-May he had Liang Tingcan wait for him there and then took him to Beijing as his secretary.⁠[9]

Under the Beiyang government Zhou Xizhe served for many years as consul and consul general in Burma, the Philippines and Canada; by 1921 he had been transferred from Burma to the Philippines as consul general in Manila. When Fan Xudong founded the Jiuda Refined Salt Company in Tianjin in the early years of the Republic, Liang Qichao subscribed 3,000 himself and persuaded his second brother, Liang Qixun, and his son-in-law Zhou Xizhe to subscribe as well.⁠[7]

In letters to her of June 24 and July 22, 1921, Liang Qichao wrote that Liang Tingwei, who worked in the household alongside Liang Tingcan, had been sent home to the village for a misdeed; the affair made him extremely angry and deeply hurt, he wrote, and his stomach trouble, absent for years, had suddenly returned.⁠[9]

In the letter of July 22 Liang Qichao argued that Zhou Xizhe ought to resign: such a post was a chicken rib, tasteless to eat, the Beijing government was about to fall so that the post would not last even if he stayed, and there was no money to be drawn from it anyway. Zhou Xizhe had a talent for business, he added, and it would be a great pity if a few more years in office made him miss his chance in commerce. Less than three and a half months later he wrote to Zhou Xizhe entrusting him with a business plan that needed a diplomat’s standing for dealing with foreigners. After the fall of the Beiyang government, when Zhou Xizhe faced the question of whether to stay in his post, Liang Qichao again urged him to go into business and hoped to use his own connections to pave the way for his son-in-law.⁠[7]

From March 1922 her mother, Li Huixian, convalesced in Manila. In June her brother Liang Sicheng came to Manila to visit their mother and Liang Sishun, who was living there with her husband; Zhou Xizhe was then consul general in Manila.⁠[10]

In 1922, as the women’s movement gained strength in China, news of it reached her in Manila. Under the name Zhou Liang Lingxian she published “The Question of the Women’s Movement” in issue 5 of Modern Women (issued by the newspaper Shishi Xinbao) on October 16, 1922. Xia Xiaohong notes that she greatly admired the ideas of the European feminist theorist Ellen Key and summed up motherhood as being “the educator of the soul”; the “family education” Liang Qichao spoke of, Xia Xiaohong writes, also pointed more to this motherhood as she had defined it.⁠[11]

Her mother, Li Huixian, died in 1924; accounts of the date differ: the chronology of Liang Sicheng’s life published in 2021 by Lin Zhu, Lou Qingxi and Wang Jun says she died of cancer on September 13, while Wu Liming writes that she died in July 1924.⁠[10][12]

After her mother’s death Liang Qichao’s first concern was what would become of the children. His second daughter, Liang Sizhuang, was then 16, and Zhou Xizhe was just being sent by the government to Canada as consul general, so Liang Qichao had Liang Sishun take Liang Sizhuang to Canada to study. Liang Sizhuang, as her father wished, entered McGill UniversityMcGill UniversityMcGill University is a public university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where English is the language of instruction. It was founded with a bequest from the Montreal merchant James McGill and received a royal charter from King George IV in 1821. Its faculty of medicine, established in 1829, was the first in Canada, and the university had 40,531 students in fall 2025.Open the full entry to study literature and earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1930.⁠[12]

Wang Jie describes Liang Sishun as both her father’s assistant and the leader of her younger siblings; after she went to Canada she became the hub through which they kept in touch, and Liang Qichao’s letters were mostly sent to her first and then passed round among the other children.⁠[13]

In a letter to her of May 13, 1928, Liang Qichao wrote that it would not matter even if Zhuangzhuang (Liang Sizhuang) failed her examinations that year and that no one should worry, since she had only just managed to get into university.⁠[13]

Her husband, Zhou Xizhe, died in 1938.⁠[1]

She died in 1966 after being beaten during the Cultural Revolution.⁠[1][5]

She was the eldest daughter among Liang Qichao’s nine children. Li Xisuo’s 2007 article lists her younger siblings as the eldest son Liang Sicheng (1901–1972), the second son 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 (1904–1954), the third son Liang Sizhong (1907–1932), the fourth son Liang Sida (born 1912), the fifth son Liang Sili (born 1924), the second daughter Liang Sizhuang (1908–1986), the third daughter Liang Siyi (1914–1988) and the fourth daughter Liang Sining (born 1916).⁠[5]

Liang Qichao gave each of his children a pet name: she was “Big Treasure” and the second daughter, Liang Sizhuang, “Little Treasure”; he also called her “my most beloved child”.⁠[6][14][8]

Her youngest brother, Liang Sili, was 31 years younger than she was; Liang Qichao joked that Liang Sili and Liang Sishun were in-laws-to-be and that their children would one day marry. She sent her little brother new clothes from abroad. Her eldest son, called Zhan’er in the family, was much older than his young uncle Liang Sili, and the two later often joked together.⁠[14]

Her brother Liang Sicheng married Lin HuiyinLin HuiyinLin Huiyin (1904–1955) was a Chinese architect, poet and writer, the wife and longtime collaborator of Liang Sicheng. With Liang Sicheng and others she surveyed China’s historic buildings in the field, helped found the architecture departments of Northeastern University and Tsinghua University, took part in designing the national emblem of the People’s Republic of China and the Monument to the People’s Heroes, and was a poet of the Crescent Moon group.Open the full entry in Ottawa, Canada, on March 31, 1928, which made Lin Huiyin her sister-in-law.⁠[10]

When Liang Sizhuang worked as a cataloguer of Western-language books at the Yenching University library, she boarded her daughter, Wu Liming, with the girl’s eldest aunt, Liang Sishun, in the city so as not to disturb the friend who shared her dormitory; mother and daughter met once a week.⁠[12]

Liang Qichao went to great lengths over the transfers of her husband, the diplomat Zhou Xizhe. When Liang Sishun and Zhou Xizhe faced the loss of his post, he wrote to console them: it was wrong for her to be anxious and gloomy; if nothing could be done, they could simply pack up and come home together, and having made up their minds to that they could be at peace; anxiety and gloom that changed nothing were not worth the trouble — this, he said, was how he had always viewed his own circumstances. He added that after so many years of his teaching she should not lose her footing when trouble came, and that this showed her learning was not yet complete.⁠[8][5]

In Liang Qichao’s last years, when the family was short of money, she wrote offering to bear some of the household expenses. He replied that she alone had nursed her mother through each of her illnesses and that for the last half year and more she had hardly undressed, seeing her mother to a peaceful end. In another letter to her he confessed that he had always felt her mother’s strange illness had been brought on by a quarrel the two of them once had.⁠[14][8]

Suffering from illness in his last years, Liang Qichao wrote to her that he could bear missing her in ordinary times, but whenever his illness flared up he missed her terribly and felt that if she were beside him and he could play the child with her, the pain would be much less. He also complained to her in a letter that living alone was most inconvenient: he had a bad cold and a fever, there was no hot bath to be had, and he could find neither ruyi oil nor ganlu tea — he felt quite wretched.⁠[4][14][8]

Liang Qichao often bought books for his children. Li Xisuo’s 2007 article writes that as soon as Liang Qichao returned to Beijing in 1912 he bought collections such as the works of Su Dongpo and the combined works of Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan for his eldest daughter, Liang Sishun, who was far away in Canada; Wu Liming’s memoir, by contrast, places Zhou Xizhe’s posting to Canada as consul general after Li Huixian’s death in 1924. Once she wrote that Lin Zhenzong, a wealthy overseas Chinese merchant in Burma, wanted to return to China to open mines, and Liang Qichao in reply pointed her to Liu Housheng, who had been studying mining for ten years; in a letter to her he called Liu Housheng the foremost lieutenant of Zhang Jian (Zhang Jizhi) and said that Liu had been very close to him for the past three or four years.⁠[5][12][7]

In letters to her Liang Qichao repeatedly said how much he relied on his secretary Liang Tingcan: on April 2, 1924 he wrote that he was rushing his work and could not do without his study and Tingcan, and on June 23, 1928 that Tingcan was someone he could not do without at his side.⁠[9]

When her mother, Li Huixian, was buried on October 3, 1925, she, her sister Liang Sizhuang and her brothers Liang Sicheng and Liang Siyong were all abroad, and the building of the tomb was left entirely to her uncle Liang Qixun. After a stay in hospital in his last years, Liang Qichao wrote to Liang Sicheng, who had gone to take up a post in the Northeast, that he missed his eldest daughter especially badly in his illness, reckoned that she and her family would be home around July by the Western calendar, and looked forward to a lively summer at Beidaihe the next year. Sun Wenye notes that this is the last family letter in the collection of Liang Qichao’s unpublished letters in manuscript, and that the family reunion he hoped for never took place.⁠[8]

Her works include the Yiheng Guan Ci Xuan, the Yiheng Guan Riji (Yiheng Studio Diary) and the Guixiu Cihua (Remarks on Ci Poetry by Gentlewomen).⁠[1]

She was skilled in classical poetry and well versed in classical prose, with a deep grounding in Chinese learning; a 2016 article in the Beijing Youth Daily calls her a specialist in the study of classical poetry, and Li Xisuo writes that she spent many years in diplomatic life with her husband and was highly accomplished in literature and music.⁠[4][14][5]