Theatre

A Performance of the Liberal Study Series on “Modern China”

The year 2011 marks the centennial anniversary of China’s 1911 Revolution. With the fall of the monarchy and the rise of the republic, the Forbidden City was subsequently transformed into the Palace Museum, signifying the opening up of the once royal space to mere mortals.

Regimes came and went, reordering the lives of the country. Land and space stay, leaving their fate to the hands of those in power to see fit how they should be put in use. Thus a hundred years passed.

Two couples stand out, bookending this particular hundred years of time, and of architecture in China.

Both American educated in early 1920s, Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin came back to China and devoted themselves to the ideal of recording ancient Chinese architectures and employ this knowledge to a better city planning. When a new China arrived, they chose to stay and helped create the Architecture Faculty of Tsinghua University. Ancient things are not welcome in new China.

Cambridge educated, Zhang Xin went to work in the Wall Street, met her future husband Pan Zhiyi. Together, they formed SOHO China in 1995, selling flats based on the marketing concept of “Small Office, Home Office”. The company has been doing bemusingly prosperous business. Still does.