Liang Zaibing

Liang Zaibing was born in August 1929, the first child of Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin; a 2021 article in the Beijing Evening News gives her birthplace as Beijing. Her grandfather Liang QichaoLiang QichaoLiang Qichao (1873–1929) was a thinker, politician, journalist and scholar of the late Qing and early Republic, a disciple of Kang Youwei and a participant in the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898. After the reform failed he spent 14 years in exile in Japan, where he ran the journals Qingyi Bao and Xinmin Congbao; returning in 1912, he helped to found the Progressive Party, served the Beijing government as minister of justice and minister of finance, and in 1915–1916 opposed Yuan Shikai’s attempt to make himself emperor. After leaving politics at the end of 1917 he devoted himself to writing and teaching, was a tutor at the Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Learning and director of the Beijing Library, and left the collected works known as the Yinbingshi heji.Open the full entry had died on January 19, 1929, and her parents named her Zaibing in memory of him, who called himself the old man of the Yinbingshi (Ice-Drinking Studio).⁠[1][2]

In September of the year before her birth, her father had founded the architecture department of Northeastern University and become its head; her mother was the only other architecture teacher who could be found at the time.⁠[2]

In June 1931 her father left Northeastern University and the family made its home at No. 3 Beizongbu Hutong in Beiping. Liang Zaibing recalled that this was her parents' second home and the first she remembered; she lived in the house from the age of two to eight, the years when her memories begin. Her brother, Liang CongjieLiang CongjieLiang Congjie (1932–2010) was a Chinese historian, editor and environmentalist, the son of Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin, the grandson of Liang Qichao and one of the founders of the environmental organization Friends of Nature.Open the full entry, was born in 1932; the family of four lived a relatively settled and comfortable life there, with her parents young and healthy, untouched as yet by war, and friends and relatives often gathering.⁠[2][1][3]

Her daughter, Yu Kui, said in 2026 that Liang Zaibing often recalled going as a child with her parents to the office of the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture in Zhongshan Park: several long, bright rooms with rows of drawing tables, the pencils on them sharpened long and fine; Liang Zaibing also said that as a child she was reluctant to tell others where her parents worked, because the society was simply “too small”.⁠[4]

She recalled that at the gatherings in their home her mother, Lin Huiyin, as hostess, was eager to share what she knew and learned and was at the same time the most important listener, while Zaibing sometimes listened in from the side; she said that at the gatherings her mother was a great talker and she herself was one of her most faithful young listeners. The Beijing Evening News article writes that these visitors all became lifelong friends of the family, and that those Liang Zaibing knew best among these “uncles” included Zhang Xiruo, Qian Ruisheng, Jin Yuelin, Zhou Peiyuan, Chen Daisun, Ye Qisun, Wu Youxun, Deng Yizhe, Tao Menghe, Li Ji and Shen Congwen.⁠[1][4]

Her mother bought her a diary and had her keep it every day; Liang Zaibing recalled that her mother encouraged her to write freely, seldom interfered with what she wrote, and only occasionally looked at it to correct miswritten characters. As her parents asked, she recorded the time and place, where she went, what happened and how she felt. She said every entry in the surviving childhood diaries ends with “I was terribly happy.” The thick childhood diary later became a record of what the family went through during its years in the south.⁠[1]

In July 1937 her parents, surveying in Shanxi, heard that fighting had broken out at the Marco Polo Bridge and hurried back to Beiping. After the war began, her mother wrote to the eight-year-old Zaibing that they would stay in Beiping until the war was won and that being Chinese now required great courage and fearlessness, and urged her that what mattered most for a child was to be healthy and to study well, and nothing else; she was not to fear the war, still less Japan.⁠[2][1]

In September 1937 Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin left Beiping with their two children and Lin's mother, stopping for a time in Changsha. One afternoon Japanese aircraft suddenly bombed Changsha and a bomb fell close to the family's house while Liang Zaibing and her brother were still lying in bed; left homeless, the family spent that night at the home of Zhang Xiruo and soon left Changsha for Kunming. Travelling through Hunan, Guizhou and other provinces for four months, they reached Kunming in January 1938; on the way Lin Huiyin's pneumonia returned, with a fever that reached 41 °C.⁠[2][1]

Yu Kui said in 2026 that Liang Zaibing remembered how, during their flight, even when riding in a broken-down bus, her mother would draw her in to admire the scenery by the road.⁠[4]

Liang Zaibing recalled that on the morning of December 13, 1940, the family left Yibin by small wooden boat downriver for Lizhuang, about 60 li away; as the boat reached Lizhuang the five children aboard shouted together in delight, “Lizhuang! Lizhuang!” The family lived in Lizhuang for five and a half years, leaving only in the summer of 1946.⁠[5]

In Lizhuang she went to school along a long muddy road every day; she recalled that her mother was pleased with her marks but pained by the long walk and always worried that she did not get enough to eat at midday.⁠[5]

She recalled that when her parents learned that the 1939 flood in Tianjin had destroyed the society's stored survey records they nearly broke down in tears; her father was not a man who wept easily, and she never in her life saw them weep so bitterly.⁠[5]

When there was nothing left to cook, her father would take her to a consignment shop in Yibin to sell clothes and belongings; a Parker pen, a watch and some of her mother's clothes were all “eaten” this way. She recalled that her parents treated it with unconcern and made light of their hardship, her father often joking, “Shall we have this watch braised in soy sauce today?” and “How about this garment as a clear-stewed dish?”; in Yu Kui's 2026 account the family often joked at table, “Are we eating braised fountain pen or clear-stewed qipao today?”⁠[5][4]

While her father, Liang Sicheng, was away on field surveys in western Sichuan, he always sent the children a thick bundle of “survey comic strips” he had drawn himself, and Liang Zaibing remembered how she, her brother and their mother laughed until they doubled over as they looked at them. Yu Kui said in 2026 that Liang Zaibing later had herself photographed in a qipao her mother had remade for her, by the big huangjue fig tree on the river bank at Lizhuang, and gave the photograph to her bedridden mother.⁠[1][4]

Accounts of when the family returned to Beiping differ: a 2022 article in the Xinhua Daily Telegraph says the Liang family came back north in the summer of 1946 and, after nine years, settled again at the Tsinghua campus; a 2021 article in the Beijing Evening News says the family of five flew back to Beiping in July 1947 after nine years away. The Beijing Evening News article writes that her father accepted the invitation of the Tsinghua president Mei Yiqi to head the university's architecture department; the family first stayed at the reception office for returning staff of the National Southwestern Associated University inside Xuanwumen, her first home after the return, which later became the premises of Xinhua News Agency; once the campus had been repaired, the family moved into No. 8 Xinlinyuan.⁠[3][1]

One day when she was 17, she and her mother were riding in two pedicabs past the Round City in front of Beihai, crossing the Jin'ao Yudong Bridge from west to east, when her mother behind her suddenly called out, “Liang Zaibing, look back!” She recalled the bridge, bright with colour in the setting sun, rising and falling against the semicircular wall of the Round City, as extraordinarily beautiful. Yu Kui said in 2026 that Liang Zaibing always remembered that moment of looking back and sharing the view with her mother, and that whenever she later passed the spot she felt a sense of loss, as if she had come to the place where a loved one had vanished, and missed her mother deeply.⁠[1][3][4]

She studied Western languages at Peking University. Her mother's tuberculosis had spread to the kidney and bladder and she needed a nephrectomy; two weeks before the operation, unable to bear seeing her mother low and restless, Zaibing brought some of her Peking University classmates to take her mother to the Summer Palace. After the operation her mother's health improved somewhat; Zaibing, by then 18, gradually became her mother's close friend and began to take on family responsibilities for her.⁠[1]

After the peaceful takeover of Beiping, Liang Zaibing, then in her third year in the Department of Western Languages at Peking University, decided to go south and join the army. She recalled that her parents at first objected — they very much did not want her to leave, and her mother wept bitterly — but in the end respected her decision; before leaving she was photographed with her parents.⁠[3]

She joined the southbound work team of the Fourth Field Army and became a news editor; there she met Yu Hang, then also a journalist, who later became her husband. On September 29, 1949, while working as an editor at Xinhua News Agency's Fourth Field Army general branch in Hankou, she received a letter from her father describing his participation in the first session of the Political Consultative Conference.⁠[1][3]

At the end of June 1950 she was transferred from the Fourth Field Army general branch to Xinhua News Agency's headquarters in Beijing, having been away from home for more than a year. She recalled that her mother wrote to her constantly, urging her to come home and missing her terribly.⁠[3]

She then spent most of her life in international reporting at Xinhua News Agency, a journalist for her whole career.⁠[3][1]

On April 20, 2001, a symposium marking the centenary of Liang Sicheng's birth, combined with the launch of the Complete Works of Liang Sicheng, was held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, attended by more than 100 people including Wang Zhaoguo, Chen Zhili and Yu Zhengsheng, members of the capital's architecture, education and cultural-heritage communities, Liang Sicheng's relatives, and teachers and students of the Tsinghua University School of Architecture; Chen Zhili, Yu Zhengsheng, Wu Liangyong and Liang Sicheng's daughter Liang Zaibing spoke in turn, praising Liang Sicheng's life and achievements.⁠[6]

In October 2021 China Architecture & Building Press published her memoir Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin: My Father and Mother, credited as narrated by Liang Zaibing, written down by Yu Kui and arranged by Pang Lingbo and Pan Yi; the Beijing Evening News article says the book was narrated by her and written up by her children Yu Xiaodong and Yu Kui. It was her first memoir in her own voice, recalling from a daughter's and family's point of view her parents' lifelong love for their country, their people, their work, their friends and their children, and their life of surveying, studying and protecting old buildings. The book's editor, Yi Na, said that some of the photographs, family letters and Liang Zaibing's diaries in it were published for the first time; Yu Kui said that she and her family had helped her mother publish the book in the hope that people would come to know the real Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin.⁠[5][1][3]

Yu Xiaodong and Yu Kui said that when she heard of the exhibition Tsinghua University was holding for the 120th anniversary of her father's birth, she took out her parents' letters and read them again and again; the Beijing Evening News article also writes that she very much wished to take up the pen herself once more and write a fuller account of her parents. On January 9, 2022, around the 50th anniversary of Liang Sicheng's death, Jiemian News published, with the publisher's authorisation, an excerpt from the book's fourth chapter on the family's life in Lizhuang.⁠[1][5]

On the evening of December 2, 2021 (Beijing time), an online ceremony was held for the donation of family papers by Holly Fairbank, daughter of John King Fairbank and Wilma Fairbank; Liang Zaibing attended with the Tsinghua vice-president Yang Bin and others. She thanked Tsinghua University for the series of events marking the 120th anniversary of Liang Sicheng's birth and expressed heartfelt gratitude to the Fairbank family for their many kindnesses during the war, especially their selfless work to publish A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture.⁠[7]

On June 18, 2024, a commemoration of the 120th anniversary of Lin Huiyin's birth was held in the lecture hall of the Tsinghua University School of Architecture. Speaking for the family, Yu Kui said that her mother, Liang Zaibing, was now 95 and had just come out of hospital; although her movement was limited, her mind was still clear and quick, and she had asked Yu Kui to convey her congratulations on the event. Yu Kui said that the gathering of the school's teachers, students and colleagues to remember Lin Huiyin had deeply moved her mother and the whole family.⁠[8]

The same year People's Literature Publishing House brought out Yu Kui's biography of Lin Huiyin, Looking Back at Lin Huiyin through the Years, with a launch at the National Library of China; Yu Kui is Liang Zaibing's daughter and the writer of her memoir.⁠[9]

Liang Zaibing's father was Liang Sicheng, her mother Lin Huiyin and her younger brother Liang Congjie; her grandfather was Liang Qichao. Yu Kui said in 2026 that Lin Huiyin's father, Lin ChangminLin ChangminLin Changmin (1876–1925), courtesy name Zongmeng, was a politician, diplomat, educator and calligrapher of the late Qing and early Republic of China and the father of Lin Huiyin. He studied at Waseda University in Japan, served in the early Republic as a member of parliament and as Minister of Justice among other posts, and in 1919 published “A Diplomatic Warning to Our Citizens” in the Chenbao, an article credited with setting off the May Fourth Movement; in 1925 he joined Guo Songling’s revolt against Zhang Zuolin and was killed by a stray bullet at Sujiatun.Open the full entry, and her father-in-law, Liang Qichao, both had a profound influence on her, and that the diary Lin Changmin kept when he took Lin Huiyin travelling in Europe in 1920 has been kept in their family ever since.⁠[1][2][4]

Her husband, Yu Hang, was also a journalist; they met in the southbound work team. Their children are Yu Xiaodong and Yu Kui.⁠[1]

In her memoir she writes that she gradually came to see in her parents an innate spirit of the poor scholar, which stood proudly however low their circumstances sank, and that from them she felt above all a high sense of social responsibility and an intense sense of cultural mission. Holding A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture (English edition published in 1984), she thought of the family's days in Lizhuang and felt that every drawing and every line of text in it had been paid for with her parents' own flesh and blood.⁠[5]

Lin Huiyin's great-granddaughter Liang Zhouyang recalled in 2024 that her great-aunt Liang Zaibing had said that Lin Huiyin, though happy and accomplished as a student at 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, still felt some regret at never having received a degree in architecture.⁠[10]

Yu Kui wrote in 2025 that Liang Zaibing's most treasured photograph, taken in 1929, shows Lin Huiyin bending tenderly over her as a baby in swaddling clothes, and that in old age Liang Zaibing would often stroke it and murmur to herself as though talking with her mother. Liang Zaibing described her mother as a truly remarkable woman who, in her daughter's heart, was still an ordinary loving mother sewing for her children, whose motherly love warmed her children all their lives, and who was the most important teacher of her life and her closest friend. She also said that even when her mother was gravely ill and bedridden, her thoughts were on how China should be rebuilt after the war, down to how low-rent housing could be built for people on low incomes.⁠[11]

Yu Kui said in 2026 that wherever Liang Zaibing went in later life she always had to look at two maps, an ordinary map and a topographic map; Liang Zaibing also said that had Lin Huiyin not been an architect she might well have been an outstanding fashion designer.⁠[4]

After retiring she took the Complete Works of Liang Sicheng with her and retraced the routes her parents had travelled to survey old buildings.⁠[3]

Xinhua News Agency: Official website: https://www.news.cn/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]