Lai Jing Chu Retrofitting Le Corbusier's the City of Tomorrow Into the Republic of China In

Anachronistic translations LaiThe materialization Jing of Urbanisme’s (1924) Chinese translation Chu in 1936, Mingri Zhi Chengshi (literally: The City of Tomorrow), may dazzle the reader of Chinese architectural history as both timely and anachronistic—timely, owing to the relatively short time gap between the Chinese version and Frederick Etchells’s English version in 1929, yet anachronistic, since architecture itself was still a novel Retrofittingdiscipline in China. For sure, piecemeal translations of articles and editorials Le Corbusier’s that summated Western ideas filled the pages of disciplinary journals such as Zhongguo Jianzhu (Chinese Architecture) and Jianzhu Yuekan (Architectural Monthly) as architects and building practitioners fervently explored how “advanced technological knowledge” from the West and “the Chinese essence” could be amalgamated. That said, an actual cover-to-cover book translation of Thethe architectural/urban City design genre was still wanting owingof to the large amountTomorrow into of capital investment, labor, and effort that such an endeavor would entail.

Treating translation as a type of media in itself, this paper borrows architectural historian Esra Ackan’s dynamic interpretation of the term, which “includes any act of changing from one place, position, condition, medium, or language”1 through thethe movement Republic of people, capital, ideas, technologies, information and images .2 of China in 1936 Homing in on the book as a cultural artifact, a deep observation of the The City of 104 Tomorrow’s physical, material, and textual properties centers this investigation. By interrogating the book both as a designed object and a vessel for pioneering ideas, and setting these observations against the political, cultural, technological and urban-spatial context of China’s 1930s, this paper seeks to unravel the func- tion and agenda of the translated book situated in its specific epoch.

Genre Coming from a humble yet literate family, the translator of The City of Tomorrow, Lu Yu-Tsun, was a sixteen-year-old boy when he boarded an ocean liner headed to Marseilles, France in 1919.3 He was to embark on a civil engineering program at the prestigious École Polytechnique in Paris funded through the “diligent work and frugal study” (qingong jianxue) scheme sponsored by the left-wing Young

1 Esra Ackan, Architecture in Translation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012): 7. 2 Ibid., 3–4. 3 Lu Yu-Tsun 盧毓駿, ‘Lu Yujun Jiaoshou Wenji (Yi)’ 盧毓駿教授文集（一） (Written Works Of Professor Lu Yu-Tsun). Taipei: ‘Zhongguo Wenhua Daxue Jianzhu Ji Dushi Sheji Xuexi Xiyouhui Xueshu Weiyuanhui’ 中國文化大學建築及都市設計學系系友會學術委員會 (Taipei: Chinese Culture University Department of Architecture and Urban Design, Alumni Academic Committee, 1988): 1417.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00031 by guest on 02 October 2021 China Association.4 After graduating from his program in 1924, he worked as Lai Jing Chu a researcher at the Institut d’urbanisme of the Université de Paris for a full five years.5 At the Institut he was surrounded by a community of French techno- crats whom Paul Rabinow calls specific intellectuals6 —those who concerned themselves with “scientific and pragmatic solutions to public problems in times of crisis” to deliver a techno-cosmopolitanism, an urbanity that synthesizes the Retrofitting Le Corbusier’shistorical and the natural with the technological.7 In 1929, Lu returned to his own nation and began to serve in the Kuomintang (KMT) government’s Municipal Government’s Construction Works Division in Nanking as a technical specialist.8 His career trajectory is thus set apart from the vital group of ivy-league educated architects of his generation that prevails in the over-rehearsed narrative of early Chinese architectural Modernism—recalling famous figures such as The City of TomorrowLiang Sicheng, Yang Tingbao, into Tong Jun, and the majority who attended to the University of Pennsylvania through the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, and who eventually returned to join private architectural practice. In migrating back to China from France, we also see a translation of Lu’s percept of his own professional role from one geopolitically context to another. the Republic of ChinaGiven the translator’s in professional context,1936 his Chinese readership extends beyond a limited circle of architects and urban planners and encompasses 105 politicians, scientists, engineers, and the general public. One might see the instrumentality of this publication as less cultural-artistic than technocratic-utili- tarian. Lu Yu-Tsun’s translation of The City of Tomorrow’s individual chapters first appeared in a civil construction periodical, Good Roads Monthly, alongside a research article on gasoline in 1932.9 Book reviews of The City of Tomorrow and

4 The qingong jianxue work-study program was a politically charged group under the man- date of Sun Yat-Sen’s Ministry of Education, and is regarded as a hotbed of early Chinese Communist Party members. Amongst the students who participated were CCP members including Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and others. Its purpose was to cultivate an ethos of ‘intellectual and manual work’ that was deemed necessary for the strengthening of the nation. (See Bailey, Paul. 1988. “The Chinese Work-Study Movement in France”. The China Quarterly 115: 441-461. doi:10.1017/s030574100002751x). 5 A travel diary entry by Lu published on a student journal dates his journey to Europe to be in the year 1920. See Lu Yu-Tsun 盧毓駿, “‘Ou Cheng Jianwen Ji’歐程見聞記 (Journey To Europe), ” ‘Xue Shu Jie’ 學術界 (Academia) 8:3 (1921), 1–8. 6 Paul Rabinow, French Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989): 16. 7 Ibid., 12. 8 The fact was stated in Chen Nien-Chung’s foreword to Lu Yu-Tsun 盧毓駿, ‘Mingri zhi Chengshi’ 明日之城市 (The City of tomorrow) (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1936): 12-3. 9 Lu Yu-Tsun 盧毓駿, “‘Mingri Zhi Chengshi Ji Qi Jihua (6)’ 明日之城市及其計畫（六） (The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning (6) ),” ‘Daolu Yuekan’ 道路月刊 (The Good Roads Monthly) 39:1 (1932), 23–6. The title of the article marks it as the sixth in a running serial, however I was unable to locate the rest through the digital database.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00031 by guest on 02 October 2021 Lai Jing Chu Retrofitting Le Corbusier’s The City of Tomorrow into the Republic of China in 1936

Figure 1: An inner spread of The City of Tomorrow translated by Lu Yu-Tsun. 1936. Photograph by author. Original drawing by Le Corbusier, Ville contemporaine de trois millions d’habitants, Sans lieu, 1922. © F.L.C. / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2017.

references made to it also appeared in political and economic journals such as 106 Municipal Review10 and National Economics.11 As war approached in the late 30s, Lu became increasingly involved in anti-air-raid urbanism, and related articles he wrote on this topic continued to fill the pages of professional journals such as Chinese Architecture and general interest publications such as Scientific China —approximating today’s science and technology magazine, Wired.

Graphics The Chinese version of The City of Tomorrow on the surface appears to reproduce design features that had previously been carried forward from its French original to its English translation. The typographical layout of text runs horizontally from left to right such that the page direction follows European methods and not the opposite Chinese or East Asian convention, which was seen as the modern style. Fidelity in translating the layout is evident in the painstaking replication of every original illustration chosen by Le Corbusier, including the fold-out pages

10 Dong Xiujia 董修甲, “‘Jinhou Nanjing Shi De Jige Jianshe Zhengce’ 今後南京市的幾個建設政策(中篇) (Several Forthcoming Construction Policies for Nanking City),” ‘Shizheng Pinglun’ 市政评论 (Municipal Review)” 5:8-9 (1937) 8-16. 11 Dong Xiujia 董修甲, “‘Shuping—Mingri Zhi Chengshi’ 書評—明日之城市 (Book Review–The City of Tomorrow),” ‘Guomin Jingji’ 國民經濟 (National Economics) 1:4 (1939), 139–43.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00031 by guest on 02 October 2021 (Figure1). Mindful of the fact that Le Corbusier intended to convey his manifesto by means of careful curation of images to visual contrast,12 the seemingly exact visual sensibility that was reproduced in the Chinese translation ensured that the final outcome radiated an aura of authenticity and legitimacy.

The sharp orange cover, by contrast, in no way resembles the French or English versions (Figure 2). Along its right edge, a vertical strip bearing the title The City of Tomorrow (‘明日之城市’), is printed in large characters, followed by the author and translator credits (‘戈必意著盧毓駿譯’) set out in smaller letterforms. Horizontally, the bottom edge states “Distributed by the Commercial Press” (‘商務印書館發行’) and is printed larger than the names of the author and translator. Founded at the tail-end of the Qing Dynasty in 1897, the Commercial Press was a crucial player in China’s print history in that it was the first to utilize modern industrial printing technology to produce publications that promoted Western scientific knowledge and modern thinking, especially textbooks.13 Support and endorsement by this particular publisher would have been perceived as a sign of prestige and credibility.

Another notable feature is the style of the typeface. Two different typefaces are visible here—one for the book title, and another for the author, translator, and 107 distributor’s names—both demonstrating strong traces of Modernist influence in their rectilinear strokes and treatment of serifs. One might even assert that they evoke Le Corbusier’s favorite stenciled letterforms—Charette and Chaillot.14 Since type design and typesetting in China were still at an inchoate stage, these were most likely custom-designed and crafted.

Set against the title is a faint image of a metropolitan skyline. The glowing beams shooting towards the sky in the background are specifically iconographic of Hugh Ferriss’ futuristic drawings from Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929). Below the towering silhouettes, we observe three strata of transportation movement— pedestrian, motor vehicles, and the underground subway system. Essentially, the image is an artistic interpretation of Hugh Ferriss’ futuristic renderings. Since this

12 Catherine de Smet, Le Corbusier—Architect Of Books (Baden, Switzerland: Lars Muller Publishers, 2005): 86. 13 For a comprehensive history of the Commercial Press, refer to Christopher A. Reed, Gutenberg In Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876-1937. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004). And, Ted Huters, “Chapter One: Culture, Capital and the Temptations of the Imagined Market: The Case of the Commercial Press”, in Beyond The May Fourth Paradigm, ed. Kai- wing Chow. (Lanham: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2008). 14 Ibid., 85–6.

108

Figure 2: Cover of The City of Tomorrow translated by Lu Yu-Tsun, 1936. Photograph by author.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00031 by guest on 02 October 2021 is the only graphical feature in the entire design of the book that radically departs from the original’s design, it arguably signals a conscious, creative decision on the part of the Chinese bookmakers to communicate a specific message. Yet what is the underlying message? In the following I shall turn to translation book’s content and linguistic register and set these observations against the cultural, urban, and political context of China of that era in order to speculate a possible answer to this question.

Endorsements The book opens with four additional Chinese introductions—the first by Tai Chi-tao, one of the founding members of the Nationalist Party, formerly a close affiliate of president Sun Yat-sen himself; the second by Chen Nien-chung, Lu’s colleague at the Examination Yuan; the third by Dong Xiujia, an acclaimed, US-educated municipal affairs expert; and the fourth by Lu himself. Le Corbusier is mentioned in these introductions mostly in a naively positive light as the writers focus on marveling at his radical vision and ignore his struggles. For instance, Chen celebrates Le Corbusier’s championship in the Voisin Plan competition and writes about his proposal being exhibited in the Paris Art Expo,15 yet fails to mention that his ideas were actually strongly opposed by the dominant Beaux- 109 Arts advocates, which was why the vision was ultimately unrealized. Lu also mentions that the Soviet Union had already adapted Le Corbusier’s designs for “a certain governmental building,”16 obscuring the fact that ever since the failure of the Palace of the Soviet Competition in 1932, Le Corbusier’s relationship with the USSR had turned sour, and his winning proposal was ultimately overtaken by a Soviet Realist entry. Were the writers simply blind worshippers of Le Corbusier (as they would want their readers to believe), or was there an underlying reason behind writing these semi-truthful accolades?

Let us recall that in the 1930s, urbanization and modernization in China rapidly transformed feudal and agrarian landscapes into burgeoning new cities across the country, each with drastic population expansion. In the more developed metropolises, such as Nanking and Shanghai, the transition was especially chaotic. Several state-led urban planning schemes began to take place, such as ‘The Great Plan of the Capital’ (Shoudu Jihua) for Nanking, which commenced immediately after the

15 Lu, The City of Tomorrow, 12. 16 Ibid., 16.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00031 by guest on 02 October 2021 Lai Jing Chu Retrofitting Le Corbusier’s The CityKMT governmentof Tomorrow was relocated into from Peking in 1928 (Figure 3).17 The Capital Plan the Republiccombined modernizationof China inwith 1936 the nationalistic project by marrying the science of the West with the aesthetics of the East, and the Beaux-Arts tradition played a big part in achieving this objective. The implementation of land-use zoning, the use of axes and radial road networks, the injection of avenues and parks, the widening and straightening of motorways, and the hierarchical spatial order that pronounced the administration and commercial center at the center of a cruci- form network gave it legitimacy as a product of modern western knowledge.18 The political assertion of legitimacy, in turn, was realized through grandiose neo-Chinese Classicist monuments and state buildings.19 Peter Carroll remarks that the new city plan was seen by the Party as a progressive didactic tool—for the first time and it was made clear that the democratic Chinese city had “no place for an emperor.”20

While the Capital Plan addressed all types of urban programs, in reality construction efforts were focused on the new government and the civic center, while the residential, commercial and other functional zones were neglected because of budgetary limits and popular resistance.21 Historical sources confirm that the Capital Plan had been a matter of public controversy. Citing newspaper clippings from the North China Herald, Chinese architectural historians Edward Denison 110 and Guang Yu Ren write that Zhongshan Road, essentially a ‘12 km long axial thoroughfare’ that formed the ‘centerpiece’ of the Beaux-Arts master-plan, was resented by a significant portion of the population who were hugely undercom- pensated for the “indiscriminate destruction of houses with the object of widening roads.”22 The manner in which these giant avenues truncate the historical urban fabric also speaks to the scale of intrusion (Figure 4).

17 Edward Denison and Guang Yu Ren, Modernism in China (Chester, England: John Wiley, 2008): 114. 18 Ibid., 115–6. 19 Ibid., 117. 20 Peter Carroll, “The Beaux-Arts in Another Register.” In Chinese Architecture and the Beaux- Arts, edited by Jeffrey W. Cody, Nancy S. Steinhardt, and Tony Atkin: 322. 21 Ibid. 22 See “Road Widening in Nanking,” North China Herald (January 8, 1929): 15. And, “Rebuilding Nanking as Capital,” North China Herald (May 29, 1929): 305. For the statistics and drawings of Zhongshan Road’s development plan, see “‘Shoudu Zhonghan Lu Ji Ziwuxian Lu Zhi Jihua’ 首都中山路及子午綫路之計劃 (續) (Planning of the Capital’s Zhongshan Road and Zhiwuxian Road, continued),” ‘Jianshe Nanjing’ 建設南京 (Constructing Nanking), No. 2 (1929).

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00031 by guest on 02 October 2021 111

Figure 3: Plan of the Capital’s Administration Area, 1929. Courtesy of Nanjing Publishing House, PRC.

112 Figure 4: Map of Nanking with markings indicating the intervention of Zhongshan Road (Orange) and Zhiwuxian Road (Red). Courtesy of Quan Guo Bao Kan Suo Yin (CNBKSY), Shanghai Library.

It is most probably not happenstance that the publication of chapters from The City of Tomorrow on The Good Roads Monthly in 1932 coincided with the period Lu worked as the technical specialist of the Zhongshan Road construction project. In 1933 Tai Chi-tao hired him to work as a minister at the Examination Yuan, and soon afterendorsed The City of Tomorrow with his foreword.23 Such timing thus suggests a vested political interest on the part of the translator and his Party. Perhaps the translation of The City of Tomorrow highlights the KMT government’s attempt to justify the ongoing controversial construction programs as an avant-garde, modern utopia envisioned by a western genius.

23 “‘Guomin Zhengfu Ling (Pai Lu Yujun Chen Nienzhong Longqian Wei Gaodeng Kaoshi Dianshi Weiyuan Hui Mishu)’ 國民政府令—派盧毓駿陳念中龍潛為高等考試典試委員會秘書 (National Government Order—Appointment of Lu Yu-Tsun, Chen Nien-Chung, and Long Chien as Secretaries of The Committee of Higher Examination),” Kaoshiyuan‘ Gongbao’ 考試院公報 (Examination Yuan Gazette), no.10 (1933).

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00031 by guest on 02 October 2021 Language Against the backdrop of a graphical layout that feigns fidelity to the original, textual idiosyncrasies stand out as uncanny features that place the subject in sustained tension.

First, a native Chinese reader might be baffled by the fact that the text is in the currently archaic Classical Chinese (wenyan). Mindful that the egalitarian and icon- oclastic modern vernacular (baihua) was steadily gaining traction as the vessel for modern thought during this period, one wonders whether it might more sense for the manifesto of universal urban planning methods in the machine age to be translated using this form of writing instead of Classical Chinese which would soon become obsolete?

Chinese and English purportedly are highly incommensurable languages since they belong to vastly different phonetic, lexical, and asyntactic systems, and the terse, monosyllable Classical linguistic structure further exacerbates these differences. Readers of Chinese modern history may recall that the New Cultural Movement (NCM), led by leftist literary reformists Hu Shih, Chen Duxiu, and Mao Dun, and which started in 1917 and continued until the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, was the force behind the promotion of baihua, the 113 modern vernacular, as the functioning Chinese written language of the modern age. At a time when translation activity was at its peak,24 a major reason for the language reform was to facilitate translation because baihua, a form of writing that allegedly allows one to “write as the mouth speaks,”25 was seen to be closer to European languages syntactically and grammatically and therefore more effective for accurate translation.26 In other words, advocates were concerned about bringing the East closer to the West.

In 1927, after the death of Sun Yat-sen, the political pendulum swung from center-left to military fascist right as the KMT fell under Chiang Kai-shek’s gover- nance. Chiang’s attempt to revive a cult in Confucianism as a strategy to counter foreign threats and internal fragmentation instigated the reactionary New Life Movement. The traditional revivalists condemned baihua as the culprit for the

24 See Teng Mei 滕梅, A Study on Translation Policies in China since 1919, (Jinan: Shandong University Press, 2009), 62-65. Teng Mei’s research footnotes several incidents in which contemporary writers in that era had unanimously trophied 1935 as “The Year of Translation.” (Ibid., 69). 25 Chen Ping, Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics (Port Chester, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 70. 26 Chen, Modern Chinese, 86.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00031 by guest on 02 October 2021 Lai Jing Chu Retrofitting Le Corbusier’s The Cityerosion of of Tomorrow literary standards amongstinto the younger generation of students27 as the Republicwell as for hamperingof China the continued in 1936 inheritance of traditional values and ethics upheld by pre-Qin classics.28 In light of this, for a modernist book such as The City of Tomorrow to be translated into the Confucian-inspired Classical Chinese language bluntly signifies the embodiment of a specific set of ideological impli- cations—in view of the ongoing debate on whether Classical Chinese was well suited for translation purposes, insisting on the usage of this dense and com- pact form of writing would have been an obstinate expression that it is indeed possible, if not superior, to interpret and convey radical and progressive Western ideas through wenyan. Paradoxically, by enshrining the beauty of this traditional language through displays of literary eloquence, specifically in contrast to the ocean of inferior translation work in baihua during the period,29 the translator was demonstrating that not only can Western ideals be brought closer to Chinese culture and not the other way around, but that the West can even be subordinated to the East.

The use of Classical Chinese may have imposed restrictions that the translator turned into an opportunity. Urbanisme’s contemporary Chinese translator, Li Hao, noted in 2009 the difficulty of translating (in Etchells’ words) Le Corbusier’s “stac- cato” tone, even when translating in modern baihua.30 However, Lu abandoned 114 any effort in portraying such a tone—apart from his choice of Classical Chinese, his elimination of most of the ellipses and all of the italics (perhaps due to limita- tions in typesetting technology at that time) rendered Le Corbusier’s voice more assertive and authoritative. The Chinese translator also had no qualms omitting certain sentences or simply providing a sectional summary of Le Corbusier’s lengthy prose—a telltale sign that his creative agency over the content began to override the original author’s.

Lu’s freedom to manipulate the author’s voice is sanctioned by the extended geographical and temporal distance from the original author. It is noteworthy that Le Corbusier, the alleged world traveler, never went to China. That said, Le

27 The Ministry of Education issued a decree that all primary schools should exclusively teach the new style baihua in 1920. (Ibid., 77). 28 Ibid., 79. 29 The lack of governing body and policies regarding translation resulted in a large quantity of poorly translated works by unqualified translators. Books were often published without proper acknowledgement of original author and source information. (Teng, A Study on Translation Policies, 90). 30 Li Hao 李浩, “‘Lijie Le Kebuxiye—Mingri Zhi Chengshi Yihou’ 理解勒 · 柯布西耶 —《明日之城市》譯後 (Understanding Le Corbusier—Translation Notes of ‘The City of Tomorrow’),” ‘Chengshi Guihua Xuekan’ 城市規劃學刊 (Urban Planning Journal) 181 (2009): 115.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00031 by guest on 02 October 2021 Corbusier’s fascination of China might be captured in the plan of Peking featured in the chapter “The Great City,” where he extolled the rational, rectilinear roads, and axial planning of the ancient capital as a counter example to the inferior “Pack-Donkey’s Way” that plagued many historic European cities and towns. It is here that I would like to observe a compelling textual mistranslation. Below the map of Peking, Le Corbusier sarcastically captions—“Compare this plan with that of Paris, a little further on. And we Westerners felt called on to invade China in the cause of Civilization!”31 The line was sternly translated by Lu into—“Compare this plan with that of Paris. We invade China, because we see the need to conquer their civilization.”32 While Lu eventually acknowledges in a later essay written in 1961 that Le Corbusier’s words were intended to be satirical, the salient humor has vanished from the solemnity and severity of the Classical sentence.33 Such a mistranslation resonates with the anti-imperialist viewpoint of the Chinese majority of its time, if not deemed a politically correct translation. Having consulted several Chinese scholars on this mistranslation myself, few have been surprised. Such a sentiment in fact continues into the twenty-first century. A similar mistranslation appears in a 2002 Taiwanese translation of the same book, in which the translator pens, “thus we Westerners realize there is a need to invade China and colonize it.” 34 115 Transpositions Architectural historians such as Mary MacLeod posited that the legendary Modernist master’s political stance remained ambiguous throughout his career— he was content to align with whichever political power was likely to support his design visions.35 This was most evident in his urban treatise. The Voisin Plan, for instance, draws upon many characteristics of Beaux-Arts urban planning principles, such as symmetrical geometries, right-angled grid systems, and axial

31 Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning (1946 edition), trans. Frederick Etchells (London: The Architectural Press, 1946): 88. 32 “以此地图而与巴黎城地图相比较，则吾人须侵取中国，因有必要侵取其文明也。” See Lu, The City of Tomorrow, 61. 33 “氏於明日之城市計劃［…］謳歌直線與直角，稱道吾國北平古都之計劃藍圖，整齊劃一，而又飽呈田園風味。並作幽默語：‘宜征討此都。’” See Lu Yu-Tsun盧毓駿, ‘Er Shi Shiji Zhi Renwen Kexue: Yishupian Jianzhu Quanzhang’ 二十世紀之人文科學: 藝術建築 (Human Sciences of the Twentieth Century: Art and Architecture): 458–9. 34 (“北京。—將此平面與巴黎相比，足足打了四個版面。於是我們西方人體認到有次必要侵略中國以殖民之。”) Ye Chao-Hsien葉朝憲, trans. “Dushi Xue” 都市學 (Urbanisme) (Taipei: Garden City Publisher, 2002): 94. 35 Mary Caroline McLeod, “Urbanism And Utopia: Le Corbusier from Regional Syndicalism to Vichy” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1985): 5.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00031 by guest on 02 October 2021 Lai Jing Chu Retrofitting Le Corbusier’s The Cityavenues, of whichTomorrow the architect into believed were conducive to the formation of the Republicsocio-technocratic of China utopias in based 1936 on principles of maximized efficiency.

Le Corbusier’s original intention behind Urbanisme was to provide a detailed defense for his futuristic thesis after a perplexed reception of his bewildering urban proposal exhibit, A City of Three Million Inhabitants, at the Salon d’Automne in 1922. Published just one year prior to the 1925 International Exhibition of Decorative Art in Paris, the book also functioned as an antithesis to the forthcoming show’s very subject matter.36 “Decorative art is dead,” he proclaims in the foreword of Urbanisme, “[m]odern town planning comes to birth with a new architecture. By this immense step in evolution, so brutal and so overwhelming, we burn our bridges and break with the past.”37

Le Corbusier’s pending political position rendered his ideas susceptible to exploitation by his Chinese representatives. As mentioned earlier, in the hands of the Nationalist officials, the same principles and content were hijacked in order to bolster the government’s ongoing building projects, namely the Great Plan of the Capital, which the translator himself participated in.38 In his own preface to the book, Lu explains his intention of introducing a new urban planning theory that may help rising Chinese cities to circumvent the environmental and social 116 chaos caused by the increasing motor vehicle traffic that was becoming a critical issue in the modernized western metropolises.39 Thus, amongst the L’Esprit nouveau trilogy, the choice of Urbanisme was by no means arbitrary—since the Republican urban plans still prescribed Chinese nationalistic neoclassical style, Le Corbusier’s detestation for the eclectic and decorative, more pronounced in Vers une architecture (1923) and L’Art décoratif d’aujourd’hui (1925), were downplayed as they were considerably less relevant economically, culturally, and politically. In fact, in 1934 Lu himself translated a speech Le Corbusier made in the Soviet Union, titled “A New Dawn in Architecture” that explained his architectural treatise. The article was published in two parts on Chinese Architecture,40 however its influence was not comparable toThe City of Tomorrow in terms of its audience reach, reception, and impact on design practice and discourse.

36 Li Hao 李浩, “Translation Notes,” 115–9. 37 Le Corbusier, foreword to The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning (1946 edition), trans. Frederick, 18. 38 Chen Nien-Chung’s 陳念中 foreword to Lu, The City of Tomorrow, 12–3. 39 Lu, The City of Tomorrow, 17. 40 Lu, Yu-Tsun 盧毓駿, “’Jianzhu De Xin Shuguang’ 建築的新曙光 (A New Dawn In Architecture),” ‘Zhongguo Jianzhu’ 中國建築 (Chinese Architecture) 3:1(2009): 42–3.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00031 by guest on 02 October 2021 Another book that Lu kept quiet about is Le Corbusier’s 1935 book, La Ville radieuse. In the year the book was published in France, Lu had already published two research articles “The Ideal Anti-Air-Raid Metropolitan”41 and “Anti-Air-Raid City Construction Trends Around the World” 42 in Scientific China, and “Practical Essentials of City Planning” in Chinese Architecture.43 Much of Lu’s oft-quoted best practices were directly extracted from Le Corbusier’s chapter on “What About Air War?” including the dispersal of administrative, industrial, and residential zones to prevent total destruction in times of attack; the concept of tower-in- the-park; the broad and rectilinear road systems; the insertion of fountains and swimming pools that could double as fire hydrants in times of attack, etc. These ideas were often delivered with Ebenezer Howard’s “garden city”, Arturo Soria y Mata’s “linear city”, and Eliel Saarinen’s “Organic Decentralization Theory”.

In 1937, Lu migrated with the rest of the Party from Nanjing to the wartime capital Chungking, where he served on the advisory committee of the new Outline of Urban Construction Planning (Dushi Yingjian Jihua Gangyao).44 Issued in 1940, it was part of the earliest effort to standardize urban planning statutes across the major cities of the country. Much of Lu’s research had made its way into the directives with traces of Corbusian principles: roads should be wide and unobstructed (in case buildings collapse); road arteries should be arranged in 117 the direction of prevailing winds (to disperse toxic gases in the event of bomb- ing); 30 percent of a building’s foundation should be used to carry a building’s own structural load and 70 percent for gardens and greenery; building exteriors should avoid eye-catching colors for purposes of camouflage.45 His credence as an urban expert established through his publications was instrumental in persuad- ing his colleagues and the public on matters of planning policy.

41 Lu Yu-Tsun 盧毓駿, “‘Lixiang De Fangkong Dushi’ 理想的防空都市 (The Ideal Anti-Air Raid Metropolitan),” ‘Kexue De Zhongguo’ 科學的中國 (Scientific China), 5:8 (1935): 317–9. 42 Lu Yu-Tsun 盧毓駿, “‘Geguo Chengshi Fangkong Jianshe Zhi Quxiang’ 各國城市防空建設之趨向 (Anti-Air Raid City Construction Trends Around The World),” ‘Kexue De Zhongguo’ 科學的中國 (Scientific China) 5:10 (1935): 405-409. 43 Lu Yu-Tsun 盧毓駿, «‘Shiyong Jianyao Dushi Jihua Xue’ 實用簡要城市計劃學 (Practical Essentials Of City Planning),» ‘Zhongguo Jianzhu’ 中國建築 (Chinese Architecture) 3:1(1935): 32–7. 44 Yu Shuang 余爽, “‘Lu Yujun Yu Zhongguo Jindai Chengshi Guihua’ 盧毓駿與中國近代城市規劃 (Lu Yujun and Chinese Early-Modern City Planning),” (Masters Thesis, Wuhan University of Technology, 2012): 19. 45 « ‘Zhuanfa Dushi Yingjian Jihua Gangyao’ 轉發都市營建計劃綱要 (Circulation of ‘Outline of Urban Construction Plan’),” ‘Guangxi Sheng Zhengfu Gongbao’ 廣西省政府公報 (Government Gazette Of Guangxi County), no. 918 (1940): 7-10.

118 Figure 5: Photo of Lu Yu-Tsun, the translator, looking at his design drawings and models of the classified underground bunker for Chiang Kai-Shek’s administration after their exile to Taiwan, early 1950s. Courtesy of his son, Mr. Lu Weiming.

Peculiarly, instead of listing La Ville radieuse as a source, Lu time and time again points to The City of Tomorrow in his articles, probably because he considered it to be the more pristine theoretical urban manifesto; by redirecting the readers’ attention, he was able to delete details that as he saw fit. For example, he ignores Le Corbusier’s rejection of underground cellars as sites of refuge; instead he continues to develop extensive research on the architecture of underground bunkers and eventually designs one for the Nationalist Government himself after the Party’s exile to Taiwan (Figure 5).46 In other words, by obscuring La Ville radieuse from the Chinese audience, he assumes the figure of a gatekeeper of knowledge, the agent of the Western master, mediating between two cultural contexts and even advancing his own agenda.

46 The rediscovery of this anti-air-raid shelter was publicly announced in 2015 and is currently not yet open to public. (“Tai Shouzuo Fanghe Fangkongdong Puguang” 台首座防核防空洞曝光 (Discovery of Taiwan’s First Anti-Nuclear Air-Raid Shelter),” China News, last modified January 10, 2015, http://www.chinanews.com/tw/2015/01-10/6955448.shtml.

Thresholds 46 Scatter!

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00031 by guest on 02 October 2021 Conclusion In the opening lines to Le Corbusier, Architect of Books, Catherine de Smet states that Le Corbusier had “tirelessly devoted himself right up to his death in 1965 to the production of books.”47 The architect remained the mastermind behind all visual and physical aspects of his books including the writing and edit- ing, graphic design, publication, and distribution, obsessively “carrying out every task himself.”48 Ironically, the constellation of translated publications carried out by his countless translators and book producers that are scattered around the globe and throughout time, though frustratingly escaping Le Corbusier’s auteurism, are second-degree creations that disseminate and reconstruct his figure within diverse cultural contexts.

By observing the meticulous graphic design and material properties of Lu Yu-tsun’s The City of Tomorrow, one sees the level of effort the Chinese producers invested to imitate and reproduce the aura of the original so that it emanates a sense of authenticity and authority. While Lu and his colleagues who wrote the forewords seem to hail the figure of Le Corbusier as a superior Western other, their linguistic register, translation styles, and at times, cheeky mistranslations betray a nationalistic agenda. I argue that the book’s instrumentality lies in its anti-colonial propaganda, its justification of ongoing controversial urban con- 119 struction projects, and its identity as an informative alibi for references that the translator-author was unprepared to divulge at a time of war.

Translating his professional experiences in France back into his work at KMT’s administration, Lu Yu-tsun’s practice paralleled but differentiated itself from the mainstream private design architects. His publications bolstered his professional and political repute and vice versa, and the knowledge and information he disseminated caused significant repercussions in architecture and urban construction—as a minister of the Examination Yuan, he was responsible for the content that prospective state technicians were to be examined on; as a trusted member of the KMT party, he was able to influence planning laws and the vetting of various important state urban and architectural design submissions, including Wang Da-hong’s celebrated National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei (1972). Thus, this article recovers a long neglected, yet crucial figure whose practice and influence swings much more widely than the better-known architectural design practitioners featured in China’s architectural historical master narrative. It is time that we turn our attention to architects in alternative roles to flesh out historical narratives still waiting to be told.

47 de Smet, Le Corbusier, Architect of Books, 7. 48 Ibid., 60.

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