Writing a Modern Chinese Architectural History: Liang Sicheng and Liang Qichao

This paper delineates a broader intellectual agenda in Liang Sicheng's seminal writings on Chinese architectural history in the 1930s and 1940s, by linking them to the historiographical writings of his father Liang Qichao, an insightful and hugely influential figure in early twentieth-century China. This broadening of understanding of Liang Sicheng's work is vital not only to the understanding of his architectural writings themselves, but also to grasping some of the most far-reaching intellectual concerns of Chinese architecture in the twentieth century, to which Liang Sicheng's contributions are most crucial.