Translating Modernism

Twentieth-century China was a place of great change. Following the end of centuries of dynastic rule, the country found itself on the brink of multiple revolutions: an industrial revolution, a cultural revolution and, of course, modernisation. This is the story of one man whose biography occupies a position at the crossroads of all three.

In the waning years of the Qing Dynasty, Lu Yutsun was born into a family of book merchants, spawning in him from a young age an appreciation for the written word that would come to define his relationship with architecture throughout his life. His journey to becoming an esteemed state architect, however, was less linear than many today. In 1919, still a teenager, Lu embarked on a voyage that would deliver him from the port of Shanghai to Paris via the ‘silk road of the sea’. There, he participated in the) organised by the left-wing Young China Association. While the programme is today recognised for having nurtured some of the Communist Party’s top leaders including Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, Lu’s association with it was rather idiosyncratic, having from the start of his career devoted himself to the Kuomintang — the Communist Party’s arch rival.