Liang and Lin: Partners in Exploring China's Architectural Past »

Wilma Fairbank (1909-2002) is editor of Liang Sicheng's A Pictoral History of Chinese Architecture.

Wilma Fairbank documents, from both a historical and a uniquely personal perspective, the professional and personal achievements of the first historians of Chinese architecture.

Booknews

After studying in Philadelphia and marrying, Lin Whei-yin and Liang Sicheng became the first two professors in the new school of architecture at Shenyang's Tung Pei University in 1928. Fairbank shows how their western training, personalities, close relationship, the perspective of their social origins, and their experience of modernism, war, and revolution bent the twig that has become the tree of Chinese architectural history. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)