范文照
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范文照(1893年-1979年)中国建筑师。
范文照为广东人,1917年上海圣约翰大学毕业,1919年到1922年就读于美国宾夕法尼亚大学建筑系,1925年为南京中山陵所作的中国复古设计,获竞赛第二名。
1927年,范文照开设私人建筑师事务所,设计的早期著名作品中,在上海,南京大戏院(今上海延安东路523号音乐厅,1930年建成)为西方古典主义建筑,而与李锦沛(基督教青年会建筑师)、赵深合作设计的上海八仙桥基督教青年会大楼(1931年建成),则在西式建筑顶部加上一圈蓝色琉璃瓦的中国传统符号。在南京,他与赵深合作设计的铁道部大楼(1930年建成,抗战后改为行政院,今中山北路252号解放军南京政治学院东校区)、励志社总社(1931年完成,今中山东路307号钟山宾馆)和华侨招待所(1933年竣工,今中山北路81号江苏议事园)均为中国复古建筑。
1933年,范文照开始转向提倡现代主义建筑,“首先科学化而后美化”,按此设计思想设计了赵主教路协发公寓(Yafa Apartment,1933年建成,今徐汇区五原路)、戈登路美琪大戏院(1941年建成,今静安区江宁路66号)、贝当路集雅公寓(Georgia Apartment,1942年建成,今徐汇区衡山路311 - 331号)[1]。
1937年抗日戰爭前夕,范文照曾設計南京國立中央大學新校園。
1949年范文照赴美国定居。1950年代为香港崇基学院設計校園建築,1956年第一批建築完成,被评价为优美和谐,不过今日多被拆除。
范文照在南京设计的铁道部大楼、励志社总社于2001年被列为全国重点文物保护单位,华侨招待所为南京市文物保护单位。在上海设计的八仙桥基督教青年会、南京大戏院、美琪大戲院,為上海市文物保护单位。
His Works, My History
Robert Fan Designed Magnificent Buildings. Then Mao Came Along.
By Maureen Fan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
SHANGHAI -- I am standing at a desk in the Xuhui District Housing Bureau with a
photograph of an old document, in search of my past. Two middle-aged bureaucrats
sit behind desks, one scowling and the other eating a takeout lunch with
chopsticks.
"We'd like to know what the procedure is for getting back the house that
belonged to her grandfather," my interpreter tells them. I look just like them,
and for a moment they can't understand why someone else is speaking for me. But
the Chinese my mother taught me was Cantonese, which turns out to be the wrong
Chinese.
After some prodding, the scowling man pulls out a weathered ledger that says a
real estate agent named Zhang controlled the property after 1958, authorizing
the government to rent it out.
When I insist that my father and uncle know no such person, and that the family
couldn't have rented out the house in the 1950s, the bureaucrat grows irritated,
telling me there was "no corruption" back then.
"What do you know?" he says coolly. "You're only the third generation."
* * *
The history of a country changes, but often the buildings do not. They continue
to stand, mute witnesses to the narrative around them. Those who control them,
manage them or live in them fill them with meaning, and that's what they stand
for, until history changes again and they represent something else.
I come from a family of architects, and so the buildings matter to us. My
grandfather was one of the most prominent architects in Shanghai, and designed
the Nanking Theater, now the Shanghai Concert Hall; the Rialto, Astor and
Majestic movie theaters; the YMCA building on Xizhang Road South; numerous
university buildings and private residences; and the Railway and Health
ministries in the southern city of Nanjing. But the buildings that drew me most
were the ones my family once lived in.
In particular, I kept returning to the house at 1292 Huaihai Rd., the last house
my grandfather Robert Fan (or Fan Wenzhao) owned before he left China in 1949,
just as the Communists took power. He and my grandmother lived here with their
four children, including my father, and a handful of servants.
I first visited this house in 1986, just after college, and again in 2002. I
stand before it now, trying to read the history of my family in its sprawl.
My father and mother are also architects, retired from their San Francisco
practice since the 1990s. I'm a journalist, raised in suburbia with only an
academic understanding of China until I came back in 2005 to study Mandarin and
work as a correspondent for The Washington Post.
Fifty years after he left, my father came back to the house he lived in on
Huaihai Road, but he refused to go inside. He stood on the sidewalk staring at
the house, his eyes red. He didn't want to change the meaning it held from his
childhood.
I go in. The house is three stories, pale yellow, like margarine, with flaking
green trim and rusty scaffolding that juts haphazardly from the facade. The
front porch is a tailor shop, and along one side, a tiny storefront sells cheap
shoes and socks.
I walk tentatively up the steps, into a labyrinth of dark rooms. The air smells
like old wood and dust, mingled with the cooking of 10 families that occupy
every inch of the place, from tiny rooms in the basement to the attic. Mice dart
between the loose electrical cables and portable stoves that line the dingy
hallways. There's a toilet next to the kitchen sink, a curtain drawn around it
to provide a modicum of privacy.
On the second floor, I find an elderly man sitting in an unheated room crammed
with detritus: plastic bags, coat hangers, stacks of dried food. He wears a
stained aqua windbreaker and a brown knitted cap against the cold.
"Come in. Sit down," he smiles, motioning me and my interpreter to wooden
chairs.
I explain that my grandfather once owned this house. From a drawer the man
fishes out a limp photocopy of a ruling issued by the People's Court, Xuhui
District, in 2002. It lists my grandmother Fan Xiao Baolian as the "property
owner of house No. 1292 in mid-Huaihai Road."
"It is not clear where the property owner went," the People's Court declared.
But I know the property owners went from a life of luxury in this spacious house
to renting a small two-bedroom apartment in Hong Kong, still a British colony in
1949. Their children, in search of degrees and passports to help end their
statelessness, scattered to the United States, with the end result that I --
their eldest grandchild -- was born and raised in a lily-white suburb in
California.
The man, a retired plastics worker, encourages me to visit the district housing
bureau to reclaim the property. If I win, he tells me, the government will
upgrade his room. As I set out for the bureau, I don't know whether I'm doing it
more for him or for me.
'With Your Own Culture'
I was drawn to my grandfather's buildings because I hoped I could pull some kind
of meaning from them and learn more about him and China. He died in Hong Kong
when I was a teenager and too young or ignorant to extract stories about why he
left China and whether he had any regrets.
From my father, I got only the barest details in between his understandable
rants against the Communist Party.
"Mao Zedong was not just against capitalists. He took away freedom of speech. He
launched the Cultural Revolution. He killed 2 1/2 million of his own people," my
father said in one of his many tirades. "Not being for Western dancing, that's
fine. But he burned Confucius's books and destroyed Chinese culture. He called
America a paper tiger when America was way ahead. He was an uneducated
hypocrite, and he took away the best years of my life."
In Shanghai, my grandfather spoke English at home, counted foreigners among his
friends and kept Mies van der Rohe chairs in his living room. On weekends, he
took my father, uncle and two aunts to see the Marx Brothers or Johnny
Weissmuller's Tarzan free of charge, in theaters he designed. They were the
privileged minority, preparing their children for university and jobs as
doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers while Shanghai's poorer citizens died
of starvation in the streets. If my father was bitter about Mao, I cannot fathom
what my grandfather must have felt.
He always believed in being open to trends outside of China. He graduated from
the University of Pennsylvania in 1921, thanks to scholarship funds made
available by the Americans, and returned to Shanghai heavily influenced by Paul
Philippe Cret, the dean of the Beaux-Arts tradition.
He began by designing buildings that incorporated both Chinese and Western
elements, such as the YMCA building with its upturned eaves and large
plate-glass windows. But after a tour of Europe in 1935, he began to criticize
the "Chinese style" and fully embrace modern Western-style architecture, as in
his design of Shanghai's Majestic Theater in 1941.
This wasn't so surprising when Shanghai was known as the Paris of the East, a
cosmopolitan, international center of trade headquartered along the Bund. But
when Chairman Mao promised to nationalize private property and redistribute
wealth less than a decade later, my grandfather's world and the future of anyone
with Western attitudes were doomed.
And yet, many Western buildings outlasted those whims of policy, surviving the
wrenching change that China has undergone over the past 50 years.
In 2003, the neoclassical Shanghai Concert Hall built by my grandfather and an
architect named Zhao Chen was lifted off the ground and moved 217 feet, to allow
space for an elevated roadway nearby. Some say it was saved from the wrecking
ball -- at a staggering cost of $20 million -- because it is one of the few
Western-style buildings designed by the Chinese.
One of the men responsible for saving it was Wu Jiang, former deputy director of
planning and now vice president of Tongji University. In his dissertation, he
countered the argument that such buildings should be torn down because they are
a reminder of China's shameful colonial subjugation.
"History cannot be changed or blotted out," Wu told me. "We should respect
ourselves. No matter whether they are beautiful or not, those buildings
represent your past." In 1989, Shanghai had a list of 62 protected historic
buildings. Today, thanks to him, it has more than 2,130.
I had heard about Wu as I asked around for names of people who knew my
grandfather. Wu's grandfather had also been an architect, and I was thrilled to
discover that Wu's grandfather actually worked for my grandfather. Wu, 49,
described the difficulties his grandfather faced as a Western-trained architect
who stayed in a China that had begun to set the clock backward.
Wu's father, trained as a civil engineer, was ruined by the Cultural Revolution,
which reduced him to an impoverished existence in the countryside and made him a
stranger to his son, Wu said. As he spoke, I thought, I could have been Wu.
"Every family like us has similar stories," Wu continued. "A lot of families
were totally destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. But if you survived, you
had a much better life. People like me were sent to university."
If you survived. Wu contrasted his life with his father's and felt grateful for
going to university. I felt soft, contrasting his father's fate with my own
father's acknowledgment that he could never have survived Mao's political
campaigns.
Then, just when I found myself feeling lucky for having been born in the United
States, Wu explained why he turned down chances to emigrate.
"Chinese people have a different cultural background. Here, you are with your
own culture," he said. "My grandfather told me an architect needs to stay in his
own culture. I argued that some Chinese architects like I.M. Pei are famous in
the United States. But my grandfather said no, no, no, he's not a Chinese at
all."
The Clash of Ideals
By the time my father finally returned to Shanghai in 2002, China was well into
its third decade of a reform policy begun by Deng Xiaoping in 1979. My father
stared through a rainy mist at the modern skyscrapers of Pudong, opposite the
colonial buildings of the Bund. His disdain at some of the uglier buildings
could not hide a kind of national pride, even after half a century in America.
"Amazing, they kicked out all the foreigners and managed to do all this on their
own," he said, impressed. It was quickly followed by a bitter aside. "Why did
they have to kill so many people, destroy so many families and sabotage their
own culture to get to the same place?
"What was all the suffering for?"
My father had just entered St. John's University in Shanghai when the Communists
defeated Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists. Under the Communists, the university
was dismantled piece by piece. The Harvard-trained founder and dean of the
school of architecture, Henry Wang, was persecuted and imprisoned during the
Cultural Revolution, reportedly turned in by his own students for being too
Western.
By 1952, a xenophobic mentality had taken hold. Citizens were forced to shout
slogans against "imperialistic capitalists." My father had to confess at weekend
"study sessions" that his mind was poisoned because he came from a capitalist
family. He and his friends were questioned for frequenting cafes and eating
Western food. Other Chinese deemed too friendly with foreigners were persecuted
so much that they chose suicide.
When my father finally received an exit permit to visit my grandfather, he told
none of his friends. He packed a knapsack with a sweater, a book and a few
essentials and climbed onto a train with my grandmother, leaving behind his
younger brother, then 19, and all their belongings. His two sisters had already
gotten out.
What did that feel like, I often asked my father. "That was a long time ago,"
was his stock answer. In China, I came to see, there is no dwelling on
misfortune. No whining. No hand-wringing. There's even a term for it: "to eat
bitterness."
But I was raised in Marin County, where feelings matter, and I wanted to know
what it was like. Pressed, my father finally said, "Of course, I didn't feel
good, but I knew Grandpa would get him out." My uncle got his exit visa about
six months later, but the family couldn't have known that that was certain. What
was clear was that once my father was out, he had no interest in visiting China
again.
For 50 years, he refused to go, even though my mother went twice, and I went. He
finally relented in 2002, worn down by the arguments of friends.
One family friend in particular, from a prominent Shanghai banking family that
had lost everything when they fled, told him she had made peace with her own
bitter memories by focusing on the improvements the Communists delivered.
The Communists had installed a state-run economy and cradle-to-grave job
security in exchange for political loyalty. They promised to end the appalling
corruption of the Nationalists but they soon substituted their own abuses of
power, collectivizing farmland, sparking famines and subjecting citizens to
brutal political campaigns that led to the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. That
campaign of terror against the educated and merchant classes is still felt today
in the "lost" generation it produced. But at least people were no longer dying
in the streets, the friend said.
My father would have belonged to that generation if he had stayed. Instead, he
attended graduate school near Boston, worked in New York and raised a family in
California. He never looked back. As a family, we visited my grandfather in his
high-rise apartment in Hong Kong. My father would describe his life in America
and my grandfather would take out his chalks and draw for me. We never talked
about China.
The 2002 trip did not change my father's views. But it seemed to jar -- perhaps
along with my posting to Beijing -- his stoic pattern of not thinking or talking
about the past.
One day last year, my father and I walked a well-used path with views of the
Golden Gate Bridge and I talked about working in Beijing. He began talking about
the revered former dean of architecture at St. John's who had studied under
Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus school, and returned to China in the
hopes of starting a school in the same modern tradition.
Instead, Henry Wang found himself trying not to use English and having to
criticize students for reading too many Western magazines. Wang and his wife,
who taught English, were both placed under house arrest. They died shortly
afterward, my father said, beginning to cough violently.
I looked up to see that my father was actually crying. "Thank God Grandpa sent
me to Harvard," he said, barely getting the words out. In his view, my
grandfather's foresight had saved both their lives and my father's career.
My father must have been thinking the same thing in Shanghai, standing before
the house on Huaihai Road and trying to keep his emotions under control. He was
silent for a long time, according to a family friend who accompanied him. When I
tell him Xuhui District Housing officials say it's impossible to get the house
back because there is no policy or procedure for dealing with pre-1949 houses,
my father says he doesn't care.
But there is another home, designed by my grandfather, that means more to him.
This is a larger building on Yongfu Road that my father remembers as the
"Bauhaus house," for its angular lines and turreted, rectangular windows. He
lived here from 1932 until 1941, when he was 11.
Here, a retired doctor named Du Guoxing has rented two rooms on the second floor
since 1958. Du shows me the original mosaic floor in his bathroom and the view
onto the back garden where my father played as a boy.
Du and his wife actually have another place to live. "But I still spend time
every day in this house to commemorate my parents," he said. "A neighbor told us
the original owner was an architect, who used to live in the room next to ours.
His two daughters shared this room."
It is in the lines of this house that I can see my grandfather's hopes and
ambitions. This house is boxy and square from the outside, absent decorative
detail and almost industrial in style. The windows are galvanized steel, once
painted black but now red with rust. Inside, the stairway landings are geometric
half circles. In places, I can see the original parquet floor and solid metal
door handles.
This is my grandfather, trained in the Beaux-Arts but following the modern
International movement that came into fashion after he returned from the United
States. At a time when most Shanghai voices urged a focus on traditional Chinese
design, I see him rejecting decoration that serves no purpose, applying that
foreign mantra "form follows function."
I imagine him poring through American architectural magazines, not unlike the
students in China today, studying the latest Western trends. I picture him
lecturing colleagues and apprentices on paying attention to the competition and
not looking inward, as China did for so many years.
I can see the cost of doing so in the jumbled lives of the many tenants in the
house on Huaihai Road. But that house seems to no longer have any real meaning
for my family. Instead, it is the house on Yongfu Road that tells me the most.
It reminds me that China once looked forward and outward, and is doing so again
today, faster than it has ever done before.
News researcher Zhang Jie contributed to this report.
- Re: Maureen Fan: His Works, My Historyposted on 05/27/2009
Good question!
"Amazing, they kicked out all the foreigners and managed to do all this on theirown," he said, impressed. It was quickly followed by a bitter aside. "Why did
they have to kill so many people, destroy so many families and sabotage their
own culture to get to the same place?
- Re: Maureen Fan: His Works, My Historyposted on 05/27/2009
Thanks for ZTing this. I saw the title and Mr Fan's photo on WashingtonPost web page this morning. I'll read this ZTing here. - posted on 05/27/2009
touche wrote:
Good question!
"Amazing, they kicked out all the foreigners and managed to do all this on theirown," he said, impressed. It was quickly followed by a bitter aside. "Why did
they have to kill so many people, destroy so many families and sabotage their
own culture to get to the same place?
这就是穷折腾吧?最高指示:与人斗,其乐无穷!
我是这么看这个问题。当时也没有kicked out all the foreigners
,美系的去,苏系的来。当然后来与苏联也搞不好关系,只好把苏联
的也赶走,只好自力更生。这里有多少真是“自力”也难说。
搞不好国际关系,这是国际政治交际能力的不足。
要说杀人,我还是相信那个中苏密秘协定,杨建利提供的。可惜我一
直追查不果,Adagio也不知查到哪里去了?三反五反,就是窝里斗,
现在国内也还在搞,杀商济官,虽然胡老大说了不折腾。打土豪,分
田地!这打家劫舍供军饷的革命恶习根生蒂固,还是折腾!
再大胆假设一下,窝里斗总还是窝外没得斗。当时韩战,与国际关系
紧张,新政权没人认,领导层心虚,战争落下病态的也不少。干部队
伍都是军制的一批,大量革命(造反)积淀下来的浪漫情绪无处发泄,
这些其实在张爱玲的《赤地之恋》中都写得很清晰。
老子说:大兵之后,必有凶年。诚然。
另外,就是一张白纸,一种清教徒,或者新宗教精神。不破不立,只
是胆大妄夫所为。比如秦始皇,比如摩西,比如默罕默德。马基雅维
里也提出过新政权杀人原理,这个老共没学会。
与苏共交恶后的中共,当时在国际上估计比当年萨达姆的地步还不如
,拚命拉拢亚非拉,输出胡志民、波尔波特,小打闹,大事不足。
- Re: Maureen Fan: His Works, My Historyposted on 05/27/2009
"the improvements the Communists delivered"?
That is nonsense. The improvements were achieved by all the residents who worked, not only by the communists.
The translator Fu Lei also developed a disdain for the traditional Chinese building styles as shown in his letters to his son Fu Cong. - posted on 05/28/2009
He should. The house could be worth tens of millions of dollars.
More importantly, the presentation of this family tragedy doesn't elicit much sympathy in me. I am surprised an American journalist doesn't know how to clamp down the elitism overtone in this article.
zt wrote:
When I
tell him Xuhui District Housing officials say it's impossible to get the house
back because there is no policy or procedure for dealing with pre-1949 houses,
my father says he doesn't care.
- Re: Maureen Fan: His Works, My Historyposted on 05/28/2009
Revolutions did not happen for no reasons. ;)
tar wrote:
More importantly, the presentation of this family tragedy doesn't elicit much sympathy in me. I am surprised an American journalist doesn't know how to clamp down the elitism overtone in this article.
- posted on 05/28/2009
I reread the article again. Maybe my assertion is a bit harsh. Rather its the depiction of the father irritated me.
Still, it is the unapologetic entitlement mentality that the elitist class our culture produces has been the source of the misery and causing the cycle of revolution/unrelenting exploitation.
Nowhere in sight this cycle has any chance of being broken in China yet.
touche wrote:
Revolutions did not happen for no reasons. ;)
tar wrote:
More importantly, the presentation of this family tragedy doesn't elicit much sympathy in me. I am surprised an American journalist doesn't know how to clamp down the elitism overtone in this article.
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