Early career On September 20, 1925, Lin Huiyin's photograph was featured on the front page of the 268th issue of
The Eastern Times Photo Supplement (), a Shanghai-based newspaper photography supplement. In 1928, Lin Huiyin accepted the marriage proposal from Liang Sicheng. After their wedding, they traveled to Europe to study European architecture. In August 1928, the couple returned to China together and were both employed by the Department of Architecture at
Northeastern University in
Shenyang. Before taking up her post, Lin Huiyin went back to Fuzhou to visit her relatives and was invited by Fuzhou Normal School and Yinghua Middle School to give lectures on "Architecture and Literature" and "Garden Architecture Art". She also designed the Fuzhou East Street Art Theater (; nowadays known as Fuzhou All-Spring Garden, ) for her uncle Lin Tianmin (). The following year, she taught the courses of "History of Decorative Art" () and "Professional English" () at Northeastern University; her husband Liang Sicheng taught the course of "Introduction to Architecture Studies" ().In the early 1930s, she and her husband met and became deep friends with the American scholars,
John King Fairbank and
Wilma Fairbank.
Japanese invasion of China In the wake of the
September 18th Incident in 1931, Lin left for Beijing, where she studied ancient Chinese architecture. Upon her return, she helped establish the Architectural Department at
Northeastern University in
Shenyang, where she then taught architecture briefly. Meanwhile, in 1928, she designed a railway station in
Jilin. This was one of the few buildings Lin designed. Throughout the 1930s, Lin and her husband lived in
Beiping (nowadays Beijing) near both of their families. Close friends at the time were the Americans Wilma and
John K. Fairbank, who admired her sense of living on a "kind of double cultural frontier," and facing the problem of "the necessity to winnow the past and discriminate among things foreign, what to preserve and what to borrow." He recalled the joy she took when she and her husband climbed the roof of the
Temple of Heaven, which made her the first woman to attempt the walk on the emperor's palace roof and when in 1937, she discovered the main hall of
Foguang Temple near Doucun, Shanxi.Li Huiyin and Liang Sicheng, during the 15 years from 1930 to 1945, conducted surveys on 2738 ancient buildings in 190 counties. Many of these ancient structures gained national and international recognition through their research, leading to their protection. Notable examples include the
Zhaozhou Bridge in Hebei, the
Yingxian Wooden Pagoda in Shanxi, and the
Foguang Temple on
Mount Wutai. In 1931, Lin Huiyin was employed by the Peking Society for the Study of Chinese Architecture (Zhongguo Yingzao Xuehui). The following year, she designed the Geological Hall and the Grey Building student dormitory for
Peking University.Over the next several years, she frequently traveled to various provinces such as
Shanxi,
Hebei,
Shandong,
Henan, and
Zhejiang to conduct field surveys and measurements of dozens of ancient buildings. She published papers and reports on architecture, either independently or in collaboration with Liang Sicheng, including "On Several Characteristics of Chinese Architecture," "Miscellaneous Records of Architecture in the Suburbs of Peking," and "A Brief Survey of Ancient Architecture in Jin and Fen." She also wrote the introduction for Liang Sicheng's book "Qing Style Construction Rules". Li Huiyin and Liang Sicheng went to Henan for an inspection. They arrived in
Jinan in the latter half of June. In the summer of 1937, she discovered the oldest wooden structure in China in the
Wutai Mountain area of Shanxi—the
Foguang Temple Main Hall, which was built during the
Tang Dynasty. over
Chengdu As Japan's invasion loomed, Lin Huiyin and her husband had to cut-short their promising restoration work of Beijing's cultural heritage sites in 1937 and abandoned their now famous courtyard residence in Beijing to flee southward along with personnel and materials of the Architectural Department of Northeastern University; their exodus led them and their children to temporary sojourns in the cities of
Tianjin,
Kunming, and finally
Lizhuang in 1940. It was in Lizhuang where the bedridden Lin, still suffering from tuberculosis, was told of her younger brother's death while serving as a combat aviator in the
air force in the
defense of Sichuan. Lin wrote a poetic memorial: In the wake of the
Lugouqiao Incident, Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng moved with the Architecture Society first to
Changsha, and then in January 1938 to
Kunming, where they lived in a residence called "Zhiyuan" on Xunjin Street. The first research project they undertook was a survey of ancient buildings in Kunming. Liang Sicheng was often away for field investigations, while Lin Huiyin stayed at Xingguo An, managing daily affairs, taking care of and educating their children, and organizing a large amount of drawings and textual materials. From October to November 1938, more than 50 main ancient buildings in Kunming, including
Yuantong Temple, Tuzu Temple, Jianshu Guild Hall,
Eastern and Western Pagodas, Zhenqing Temple Hall, and the Golden Pavilion, were surveyed by Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng. In 1940, she followed Liang Sicheng's
work unit, the
Academia Sinica, to Lizhuang near
Yibin, Sichuan, and lived in a low, dilapidated farmhouse. The life of displacement and the harsh material conditions led to a recurrence of her lung disease. On her sickbed, she read the parts of the
Twenty-Four Histories related to architecture, collecting materials for writing "A History of Chinese Architecture," often working late into the night. During this period, her literary works were not many, and in her poetry drafts, confusion, melancholy, desolation, and depression had replaced the tranquility, elegance, clarity, and gentleness of the style before the war. The poems often revealed her concern for the future and fate of the motherland.
After the war After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Lin Huiyin's family returned to Beiping in August 1946. Soon after, she designed faculty housing for
Tsinghua University and accepted design tasks outside the school. In May 1948, she published nine poems titled "Miscellaneous Poems Written While Ill" (《病中杂诗》) in the "Literary Magazine" (《文学杂志》). At the end of that year, the outskirts of Beiping, where Tsinghua University was located, were liberated by the
People's Liberation Army, which encircled the ancient capital. Lin Huiyin and her husband were deeply worried about the destruction of the majestic and magnificent ancient buildings with carved beams and painted rafters within the city, which might be destroyed by the war. In early 1949, the sudden visit of two representatives of the People's Liberation Army, who showed a protective attitude towards important cultural relics and ancient sites, dispelled their doubts about the Communist Party. They compiled the "National List of Cultural Relics and Ancient Buildings" at the request of the People's Liberation Army. This book later evolved into the "National Cultural Relics Protection Catalogue". Lin designed the floral wreath patterns at the base of the Monument to the People's Heroes. Lin also took part in the standardization of Beijing city planning. In 1950, Lin Huiyin was specially invited to attend the second session of the first National Political Consultative Conference and was appointed as a member of the Beijing City Planning Committee and an engineer. She proposed the idea of building a "City Wall Park". In 1951, at the age of 47, in order to save the traditional craft of
cloisonné, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, Lin Huiyin, despite being ill, worked with Gao Zhuang, Mo Zongjiang, Chang Shana, Qian Meihua, and Sun Junlian to conduct research in factories and designed a series of novel patterns with national characteristics for the "
Asia and Pacific Rim Peace Conference" and the "Soviet Cultural Delegation". In May 1953, Beijing began to consider the demolition of the city's traditional "
pai lou" (archway structures), marking the start of a large-scale removal of ancient architecture in the city. To save the only remaining complete archway street from being destroyed due to political reasons, Liang Sicheng, the husband of Lin Huiyin, had a fierce argument with
Wu Han, who was then the Deputy Mayor of Beijing. Soon after, at a dinner party hosted by
Zheng Zhenduo, the director of the Bureau of Cultural Affairs of the Ministry of Culture, which was attended by well-known figures in the field of cultural relics, Lin Huiyin and Wu Han had a face-to-face confrontation. Subsequently, Lin Huiyin's health deteriorated sharply, and she eventually refused medical treatment. In October 1953, Lin Huiyin was elected as a member of the first council of the
Architectural Society of China (中国建筑学会), a member of the China Architecture Research Committee (中国建筑研究委员会), and an editorial board member of the Architectural Journal (《建筑学报》). In June 1954, she was elected as a congresswoman at the Beijing Municipal People's Congress.) in
Beijing Tongren Hospital in
Dongcheng, Beijing. On April 2,
The Beijing Daily published Lin Huiyin's obituary. On April 3, a memorial service for Lin Huiyin was held at Xianliang Temple in Jinyu Hutong (金鱼胡同贤良寺), and her body was buried in
Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery. == Publications ==