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Story of the landmark building that made a mark on Chinese design
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FAN WENZHAO, one of the three architects who designed the Chinese YMCA Building in Shanghai, traced the history of Chinese architecture and talked about China’s architectural renaissance in an address in 1931 when the building was nearing completion:
“Briefly tracing the history, principles and peculiar features of Chinese architecture and comparing it with the West and outlining the principles and peculiar features of the former, the noted Chinese architect, winner of several prizes and founder of the Chinese Architects’ Society delivered his speech with lantern illustrations at the meeting presided over by (American missionary and YMCA official) George A. Fitch at the Foreign YMCA.”
In comparing Chinese architecture with that of the West, Mr Robert Fan told his audience that the Chinese were never military people except perhaps during the reign of the Yuan Emperor Kublai Kahn and consequently there are no triumphal arches and war memorials like those in other countries.
He also said the Chinese people as a whole had little religious zeal, and therefore China has no great temples like the great and magnificent cathedrals and churches in Europe.
In this respect, he further pointed to the fact that Chinese artists and architects in the old order were by profession scholars and poets who took up the study of art as means for personal experiment and expression whereas in Europe during the Middle Ages artists were looked upon as superior and men of great importance and were given high honor by great patrons of art like the Medici in Italy.
About 214 BC, the most famous of Chinese building undertakings, the Great Wall, was built by Emperor Qin Shi Huang. It is 1,140 miles (1,824 kilometers) long. The Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) and Song Dynasty (960-1279) figured as the flourishing stages of Chinese architecture with emperors as great patrons.
Mr Fan pointed out that almost always Chinese houses and especially palaces have their walls on the north, west and east only leaving the south for their front doors.
In grouping houses a strict balance is always desired. In point of sincerity there is no false idea of construction — each element in the structure has its structural value and decoration and is a matter of inspired utility.
The subtlety of the curve is more effectively preserved in the Northern style than in the south where it has been developed into too fantastic a form. Human and animal figures used for decorative purposes have religious values in as much as they are regarded as protecting spirits against evil demons.
The speaker attached paramount importance to the Chinese architectural renaissance: He pointed to the fact that in the past in China, artists had been comparing the East with the West in the light of a struggle between efficiency and beauty.
Recently, however, he explained there has appeared on the stage a new but small group of men who seek to bring about a synthesis of the best in both.
They are the architects in modern China who are beginning to make their feeble efforts felt in fighting against the ugly imitations of Western Architecture and endeavoring to introduce the modern conveniences and comforts into buildings that can still retain the old beauty of China.
— Excerpt from the China Press (May 13, 1931)
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