Lin Huiyin (; 10 June 1904 – 1 April 1955; known as Phyllis Whei Yin Lin when studying in the United States) was a Chinese architect, writer, and poet. She is known to be the first female architect in modern China. Her husband was Liang Sicheng, named as the "father of modern Chinese architecture".
In the ninth year of the Republic of China (1920), Lin Huiyin traveled to Europe with her father Lin Changmin. In the twelfth year of the Republic of China (1923), she participated in the activities of the Crescent Moon Society. In the thirteenth year of the Republic of China (1924), she studied in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts, taking courses in the Department of Architecture and earning a Bachelor of Arts degree (to be posthumously awarded a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 2024). Later, she studied at the Yale University School of Drama in the Department of Stage Art. Department of Northeastern University in 1928, together with Liang Sicheng, she annotated and reviewed the "Great Tang Records on the Western Regions" from the collection of the Chinese Architecture Society (hundreds of Tang Dynasty buildings and place names), discovering the Tang Dynasty architecture – the Foguang Temple on Mount Wutai. After the liberation, Lin Huiyin made contributions to the design of the emblem of the People's Republic of China, the design of the Monument to the People's Heroes, and the innovation of cloisonné craftsmanship, and authored "Poetry Collection of Lin Huiyin" and "Essays of Lin Huiyin".
After 1949, as professors in Tsinghua University in Beijing, Liang and Lin began restoration work on cultural heritage sites of China in the post-imperial Republican Era of China, a passion which she would pursue to the end of her life. The American artist Maya Lin is her niece and the American poet Tan Lin is her nephew.Peter G. Rowe, Seng Kuan, Architectural Encounters With Essence and Form in Modern China, MIT Press, 2002, p.219,
Early life and education
Early life Lin was born in Hangzhou though her family was from Minhou. She was the daughter of Lin Changmin (林長民) (16 September 1876 - Minhou, 24 December 1925) and He Xueyuan (何雪媛) (1882–1972).
At the age of 5, she was tutored by her great-aunt Lin Zemin; at 8, she moved to Shanghai and attended the Hongkou Patriotic Primary School.
In the third year of the Republic of China (1914), Lin Huiyin came to Beijing with her grandfather and lived with her father in Qianwanggongchang.
Secondary education In 1916, she attended the Peking Pei Hua Girls' School, which was run by the British Church.
In April 1920, she traveled to Europe with her father, and was influenced by a female architect, who was her landlady in London, to pursue the study of architecture. During this time, she also met her father's disciple Xu Zhimo and developed a strong interest in modern poetry.
After more than a month of traveling in Europe, Lin Huiyin and his father came to London, England. In order not to delay his daughter's studies, Lin Changmin sent Lin Huiyin to St Mary's Girls School in London and hired an English tutor for her. During her more than one year in England, Lin Huiyin read a large amount of Western literature and got used to Western lifestyles such as afternoon tea.
In 1921, she returned to Beijing, China, with her father and continued her studies at Pei Hua Girls' School.
In 1923, Xu Zhimo, Hu Shi, and others established the Crescent Moon Society in Beijing, where Lin Huiyin often participated in the literary and artistic activities.
In April 1924, the sixty-four-year old Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore visited China. Lin Huiyin, along with Xu Zhimo, Liang Sicheng, and others, accompanied Tagore on a tour of Beijing. Lin Huiyin and Xu Zhimo worked together to do the interpretation work for Tagore, during which Lin Huiyin distinguished herself with her fluent English and also won the admiration of the poet. Tagore wrote a poem for Lin Huiyin: The azure of the sky fell in love with the verdant green of the earth, and the breeze between them sighed "Alas!"
In a time when women had limited access to formal education, Lin was able to receive a formal education due to being part of a wealthy family. Because of her family's affluence she was able to travel extensively with her father. She obtained her degrees both in England and the United States. However, Lin's works are highly regarded. Lin wrote free verse, novels and prose. Lin's poems appeared in publications such as the Beijing Morning Post, Crescent Monthly, Poetry and the Dipper and the newspaper L'impartiale in Tianjin.
Higher education In 1924, Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng both enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also worked as a part-time assistant at the architectural department. Although they both wanted to pursue architecture studies at the School of Architecture, Lin was not admitted simply because she was a woman. She therefore enrolled at the School of Fine Arts. Despite the university's gender-discriminatory policies, Lin still pursued her passion for architecture and took rigorous architecture courses.Ideology and Culture in China; http://en.gmw.cn/2013-12/12/content_9786921_2.htm#Content_Title Both being born in Dragon year, Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng attended school and foster the birth of Chinese architecture. It was here that Lin along with Liang, her future husband and whom she had known since childhood, pursued their love of architecture. She served as a part-time teaching assistant in architectural design at the university from 1926 to 1927.
In 1927, Lin completed the requirements for a Bachelor of Architecture degree. However, because she was a woman, she was not allowed to receive a Bachelor of Architecture degree. On February 24, 1927, Lin was conferred a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. After her graduation from the University of Pennsylvania in 1927, Lin enrolled in stage design programs in Yale University as a graduate student, pursuing her longtime interest in drama.
Posthumously-conferred degree In 1927, although Lin completed the requirements for a Bachelor of Architecture degree under the university's gender-discriminatory policies, she was denied the degree due to her gender and was instead awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. On October 15, 2023, the University of Pennsylvania decided to correct this century-old gender-discriminatory practice against her. In 2024, the university officially decided to posthumously confer Lin the degree of Bachelor of Architecture. On May 18, 2024, Lin's granddaughter Yu Kui () attended the School of Design commencement on behalf of Lin and collected Lin's degree diploma from the school's dean Frederick Steiner. The diploma of the Bachelor of Architecture degree was dated February 1927, the month Lin originally graduated from the university. The diploma also noted "This degree is awarded in faculty in order to restore Lin Huiyin to the Class of 1927" (all capitalized) at the bottom of the paper. Lin's name (as well as her alternate name used while in the United States) did not appear in the official 2024 commencement program published by the University of Pennsylvania.
Career
Early career On September 20, 1925, Lin Huiyin's photograph was featured on the front page of the 268th issue of The Eastern Times Photo Supplement (), a Shanghai-based newspaper photography supplement.
In 1928, Lin Huiyin accepted the marriage proposal from Liang Sicheng. After their wedding, they traveled to Europe to study European architecture.
In August 1928, the couple returned to China together and were both employed by the Department of Architecture at Northeastern University in Shenyang. Before taking up her post, Lin Huiyin went back to Fuzhou to visit her relatives and was invited by Fuzhou Normal School and Yinghua Middle School to give lectures on "Architecture and Literature" and "Garden Architecture Art". She also designed the Fuzhou East Street Art Theater (; nowadays known as Fuzhou All-Spring Garden, ) for her uncle Lin Tianmin (). The following year, she taught the courses of "History of Decorative Art" () and "Professional English" () at Northeastern University; her husband Liang Sicheng taught the course of "Introduction to Architecture Studies" ().In the early 1930s, she and her husband met and became deep friends with the American scholars, John King Fairbank and Wilma Fairbank.
Japanese invasion of China In the wake of the September 18th Incident in 1931, Lin left for Beijing, where she studied ancient Chinese architecture. Upon her return, she helped establish the Architectural Department at Northeastern University in Shenyang, where she then taught architecture briefly. Meanwhile, in 1928, she designed a railway station in Jilin. This was one of the few buildings Lin designed. Throughout the 1930s, Lin and her husband lived in Beiping (nowadays Beijing) near both of their families. Close friends at the time were the Americans Wilma and John K. Fairbank, who admired her sense of living on a "kind of double cultural frontier," and facing the problem of "the necessity to winnow the past and discriminate among things foreign, what to preserve and what to borrow." He recalled the joy she took when she and her husband climbed the roof of the Temple of Heaven, which made her the first woman to attempt the walk on the emperor's palace roof and when in 1937, she discovered the main hall of Foguang Temple near Doucun, Shanxi.Li Huiyin and Liang Sicheng, during the 15 years from 1930 to 1945, conducted surveys on 2738 ancient buildings in 190 counties. Many of these ancient structures gained national and international recognition through their research, leading to their protection. Notable examples include the Zhaozhou Bridge in Hebei, the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda in Shanxi, and the Foguang Temple on Mount Wutai. In 1931, Lin Huiyin was employed by the Peking Society for the Study of Chinese Architecture (Zhongguo Yingzao Xuehui). The following year, she designed the Geological Hall and the Grey Building student dormitory for Peking University.Over the next several years, she frequently traveled to various provinces such as Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, Henan, and Zhejiang to conduct field surveys and measurements of dozens of ancient buildings. She published papers and reports on architecture, either independently or in collaboration with Liang Sicheng, including "On Several Characteristics of Chinese Architecture," "Miscellaneous Records of Architecture in the Suburbs of Peking," and "A Brief Survey of Ancient Architecture in Jin and Fen." She also wrote the introduction for Liang Sicheng's book "Qing Style Construction Rules".
Li Huiyin and Liang Sicheng went to Henan for an inspection. They arrived in Jinan in the latter half of June.
In the summer of 1937, she discovered the oldest wooden structure in China in the Wutai Mountain area of Shanxi—the Foguang Temple Main Hall, which was built during the Tang Dynasty.
As Japan's invasion loomed, Lin Huiyin and her husband had to cut-short their promising restoration work of Beijing's cultural heritage sites in 1937 and abandoned their now famous courtyard residence in Beijing to flee southward along with personnel and materials of the Architectural Department of Northeastern University; their exodus led them and their children to temporary sojourns in the cities of Tianjin, Kunming, and finally Lizhuang in 1940. It was in Lizhuang where the bedridden Lin, still suffering from tuberculosis, was told of her younger brother's death while serving as a combat aviator in the air force in the defense of Sichuan. Lin wrote a poetic memorial: