Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
open and wide: it was the magnifi cent Lake Without a Name. A small island adorned
the centre of the lake, adding to the boundless view. The buildings of the men's
dormitories were lined up one by one on the northern shore of the lake. Tucked
away behind hills and a dense forest on the southern shore of the lake was the
women's dormitories, in the traditional courtyard style. From the fi rst day of enter-
ing the university I was captured by the natural scenery of the campus. I came to
know only afterwards that here used to be a famous garden called Shuchun Yuan,
the “Garden of the Fair Spring”, closely connected to the Qing imperial court
200 years ago. The streams fi lling the rivers and lakes of the garden came from the
adjoining Shaoyuan, a famous garden 300 years ago in the Ming dynasty already
renowned for its streams. When Yenching University opened up its campus in 1921
however, the structures of these two historic gardens had already disappeared with-
out a trace. Yenching University used exactly the spot of these two famous gardens,
and after adopting special designs and using the conditions of the natural environ-
ment to the full, a very special university campus was built. Even more important,
however, was that for the buildings on the campus classical Chinese architectural
forms were used, creating an even closer harmony between historical traditions and
modern needs.
Furthermore, it has to be pointed out that the principal lay-out of the campus was
carried out under the guidance of the American architect Henry K. Murphy, which
proved it was in fact a new creation completed under the infl uence of the cultural
exchange between East and West, representing the trend of the times rather well. 1
At the Yenching University campus there were several other equally picturesque
buildings, like a small bell pavilion on a hill under a pine tree, the “Overlooking the
Water Cottage” (Linhu Xuan) on the lakeside, the small “Contemplating Merit
Pavilion” (Siyi Ting) on the lake's island, and the “Broad Elegant Pagoda” (Boya
Ta) towering over the shore, structures which were all rather spectacular. The
expression “glimmering lake refl ecting pagoda” became the famed proverbial por-
trayal of the campus' scenery. The Boya pagoda and the Siyi pavilion are well worth
talking about in more detail.
The name of the Boya pagoda had much to do with the American professor at
that time at the Philosophy Department of Yenching University, Bo Chenguang or
Lucius C. Porter. He was infl uenced deeply by traditional Chinese culture and had
been working at the Peking offi ce of the Harvard-Yenching Studies Institute. More
importantly, his elders had done a great deal to develop Tongzhou Union University,
one of the predecessors to Yenching University. When Yenching University started
constructing a water-pagoda to add to the streams inside the campus, in order to
commemorate these historical origins, the shape of the famous pagoda of Tongzhou,
the Randeng pagoda (“Sparkling Lamp Pagoda”) was adopted, and the name Boya
pagoda was chosen. “BO” refers to the fi rst character in Porter's Chinese name, and
“YA” implicates an “elegant scholar”. In English the pagoda is simply called
“Porter's Pagoda”.
1 Jeffrey William Cody, Henry K. Murphy, An American Architect in China , Chapter 5 “Old Wine
in a New Bottle: Yenching University, 1918-1927.” A Dissertation of Cornell University for the
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Cornell University, 1989.
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