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Zhu Qiqian

Founder of the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture who reshaped Beijing in the early Republic and republished the Song building manual Yingzao fashi.

Also known as Zi Guixin · Hao Huoyuan

Zhu Qiqian, courtesy name Guixin and literary name Huoyuan, came from a family of Zijiang in Guizhou and was born at Xinyang in Henan in 1871. In the early Republic he directed the remaking of Beijing, turning the Altar of Land and Grain into Central Park in 1914 and rebuilding the Zhengyang Gate the following year. In 1919 he had the Ding family manuscript of Li Jie's Song building manual Yingzao fashi, which he had found in the Jiangnan Library at Nanjing, printed by lithograph, and in 1925 issued a collated edition in Song style prepared with Tao Xiang. In 1930 he founded the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture and became its head, bringing in Liang Sicheng and Liu Dunzhen to lead its technical and documentary departments and their surveys of early buildings. He died in Beijing in 1964.

Life and times

  1. 1871 CEBornQingRepublican EraModern Era
  2. 1914Lunar New Year Renamed Spring Festivalage 43In 1914 the Interior Minister Zhu Qiqian proposed naming the lunar New Year's Day the Spring Festival, the president approved, and the name came into official use for holidays.
  3. 1930Society for Chinese ArchitectureTook partage 59Zhu Qiqian founded the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture in Beiping, where Liang Sicheng, Liu Dunzhen and their colleagues combined field surveys with textual study and made Chinese architectural history a modern discipline.
    1. Zhu Qiqian Founds the Architecture SocietyIn 1930 Zhu Qiqian founded the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture in Beiping to study China's traditional buildings.
  4. 1964 CEDied