Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts

THE SUN YAT-SEN MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM

279 In his pioneering work, A History of Building Types, Nikolaus Pevsner interprets the rapid increase and evolution of different building types in the nineteenth century as the response to the modern transformation of Western society.1 The book uses structures such as monuments, libraries, theaters, hospitals, prisons, hotels, and factories as examples. However, it overlooks two other important types—the classroom and auditorium. Serving as both facilities for mass education as well as lecturing spaces, these two building types, which I here call “preaching space,” have played significant roles in China’s modern transformation, especially for nationstate building during the Republican period in the first half of the twentieth century. Their significance in modern Chinese architectural history will become more evident if we look at any Chinese architectural history book, in which palace, temple, pagoda, theater house, residential compound, and garden dominate each chapter on the architecture of premodern China. How did a preaching space appear in modern China, and how did it serve China’s nation-state building? How did it bring new requirements to architectural design and how did a Chinese-style architecture both accommodate and respond to these requirements? This chapter answers these questions through a case study focusing on the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Auditorium in Guangzhou, built between 1926 and 1931 (fig. 12.1). Until 1959, when the Great Hall of the People in Beijing was built, the Sun Yat-sen Auditorium remained China’s largest auditorium, and it survives as one of the most important examples of a Chinese-style, modern structure. Delin Lai THE SUNYAT-SEN MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM A Preaching Space for Modern China 12 Fig. 12.1. Lü Yanzhi, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Auditorium, Guangzhou. Photo by author. 280 Delin Lai Traditional Chinese Congregation Spaces vs. a Modern Preaching Space In February 1926 the Nationalist government, led by the Guomindang (GMD), decided to build a monument in commemoration of Sun Yat-sen, who had died a year earlier. The building derived its name, Jiniantang (memorial hall), from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. However, the new building in Guangzhou was not merely conceived for the purpose of commemoration. The auditorium, traditionally used for assemblies, lectures, mass education, and religious preaching and rituals was intended to commemorate Sun and disseminate his thought. Historically, China has a tradition of educational spaces, particularly lecture halls in Buddhist monasteries and Confucian academies. However, since the development of Pure Land Buddhism in the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), the hall for worshiping Buddhist icons in a monastery had come to supersede the lecture hall as the most significant place.2 Furthermore, since the crackdown against the liberal intellectuals of the Donglin School in the late Ming dynasty and the Fig. 12.2. Teacher and students at a private school. From Yu Jixing and Chen Zuen, Lao mingxinpian: Fengsu pian (Old post cards: customs collection) (Shanghai: Shanghai huabao chubanshe, 1999), 132. 281 The Sun Yat-sen Memorial Auditorium continuing tight control of the Qing court over scholars, Confucian academies changed from institutions of freethinking to the place for civil examinations, which emphasized writing over lecturing.3 This continued until the late nineteenth century with what the Westerners saw as they began to document Chinese society and Chinese schools with their cameras. These images showed teachers who sat either behind or beside students. Clearly the teachers’ role in the classroom was less that of a lecturer than a supervisor (fig. 12.2). A congregational and educational facility, the auditorium reappeared in Chinese social life during the modern era after the downfall of the Qing dynasty and with the emergence of Western influence. Accompanying the expansion of foreign powers in China—militarily, economically, as well as culturally—the auditorium was also popularized in other forms, such as churches and schools.4 They competed with the Chinese state for believers through preaching and lecturing, methods different from those that were traditionally employed in China, which, as a result of the imperial examination system, emphasized recitation and memorization more. A modern auditorium differed fundamentally from the traditional Chinese theater house and guild hall, two of the most important Chinese building types associated with mass congregation until the early twentieth century. In these Fig. 12.3. Wu Youru, A Chinese Theater. From Wu Youru, Shenjiang shengjing tu (Famous sights of Shanghai) (Shanghai: Dianshizhai, 1885), vol. 2, 19–20. 282 Delin Lai traditional congregation spaces, the stage...