This article was adapted and translated from the article originally posted on the WeChat public account AC ArchiCreation.
Li Ying at different stages of her life
The pages of history are adorned with the names of remarkable individuals from the past. Lin Huiyin, a shining star of the Republican era, was widely admired for her exceptional academic prowess and audacity. She was surrounded by many cultural luminaries during the golden age of the Republic of China, and her influence extended to numerous juniors and students. Professor Wang Weiyu, from the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University, once described her as such:
There is a heroine in my life - Lin Huiyin. She is my cousin, a talented poetess from the 1930s, and a female architect with great achievements. Her charming and elegant appearance, combined with her sharp literary talent, made many people envious and fall in love with her. Unknowingly, I also desired to be among those who admired her.
Maya Lin, the Chinese-American architect and artist who gained fame for designing the U.S. Vietnam War Memorial, was honored with the Portrait of a Nation Prize by the Smithsonian in November 2015. Despite being isolated from her extended family, she was able to inherit the Lin family's artistic talent, which was also possessed by her aunt and uncle, who were renowned figures in Chinese academia. Interestingly, she had never met her aunt, Lin Huiyin, before.
(From Left) Lin Huiyin, Wang Weiyu, Maya Lin
In fact, there is another talented woman in the architectural field who also has a kinship with Lin Huiyin, and her name is Li Ying. Liang Sicheng (the husband of Lin Huiyin, "the father of modern Chinese architecture) once explained this first St. John's University (the most prestigious private university in the Republic of China) architecture graduate in this way:
Her relationship with me is not teacher-student, but relative. Her mother was a cousin of my late wife, Lin Huiyin.
Ying's mentor and classmate at St John's described her:
She was a 'good student' who studied hard. At that time she just buried her head in her books, studied quite hard, and was very competitive, so she did very well in her studies, and did not participate in any activities other than reading (there weren't many whatsoever at that time), nor did she participate in sports, and very rarely did I hear her talk about recreation and theater or anything like that.
As a student, she stood out with her strong, aggressive, and proud demeanor, as well as her striking attire featuring short hair and long pants, foregoing the traditional cheongsam.
After completing her undergraduate courses at St John's, Li Ying earned two Master's degrees in Architecture from both MIT and Harvard Architecture School. She was directly mentored by famous architects such as Alvar Alto and Walter Gropius and even became one of their favorite students.
Li Ying graduated from the prestigious Harvard University Graduate School in 1949. She left her privileged life abroad with the goal of contributing to the development of a new China. However, upon her return, she was met with a series of challenges including illnesses, political movements, class struggles, and the Cultural Revolution. Despite her ambition to become an architect, her family background and political factors made it difficult for her to pursue her dreams, and she remained silent about her professional career for over thirty years, including after retirement. She worked in a design laboratory without any reference materials or as a plasterer in an architectural firm while her friends abroad continued to check on her. In 1984, the year she retired, her name was lost in the architectural world, leaving only two specific engineering design projects. In the same year, China Construction Press's "Masters Series" was published, starting to introduce domestic students to the names of international architectural luminaries.
The most beautiful chapter of Li's life seems to have been prematurely played in the first thirty years of her life. In the second half of her long but tormented life, we can see a woman with sincere dreams gradually had her passion and spirit eroded by the times. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated case in China at the time. countless people's youth lost their best light because of this crazy and lost era.
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