Liu Dunzhen

Also known as Zi Shineng

Liu Dunzhen, courtesy name Shineng, was born in 1897 at Xinning in Hunan. He went to Japan in 1913 and at the Tokyo Higher Technical School turned from mechanical engineering to architecture. Back in China he taught at the Suzhou industrial school and Central University. He joined the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture in 1931 and from 1933 was a full-time researcher and head of its documentary department, sharing the work with Liang Sicheng's technical department; he led surveys of early buildings in Hebei, Henan and Shanxi and, during the war, in Yunnan and Sichuan, and published many survey reports. In 1943 he returned to teach at Central University and later spent many years at the Nanjing Institute of Technology, where he wrote Classical Gardens of Suzhou and edited a history of ancient Chinese architecture. He died in Nanjing in 1968.