The origin of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies traces back to the enduring friendship between four remarkable characters—John K. Fairbank (费正清), Wilma Cannon Fairbank (费慰梅), Liang Sicheng (梁思成), and Lin Huiyin (林徽因)—and the deep impact they had on one another.
All four had impeccable intellectual credentials and adventurous spirits. John, a graduate of Harvard, came to China as a Rhodes Scholar from Oxford to study Chinese and finish his dissertation. Wilma, a Radcliffe graduate, focused on her painting and studies of Chinese art and architecture while she built the Fairbanks’ life and friendships in Peking. Liang Sicheng, the son of China’s leading intellectual and reformer—Liang Qichao, who had helped launch the reform movement of 1898—was beginning an illustrious career as an architect and China’s most influential architectural historian. His wife, Lin Huiyin (whose English name was Phyllis), was the daughter of one of Liang Qichao’s closest colleagues and worked as a poet and architect alongside her husband. Both had studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.
These two couples met in Peking in 1932 and would remain the closest of friends for the rest of their lives. The friendship would not only influence each of their lives and legacies but also nurture new perspectives, including John Fairbank’s ever-growing determination to invigorate education about China in the United States.
During a brief moment in the 1930s, the Fairbanks and the Liangs were able to live a charmed life—picnics by horseback to the Summer Palace ruins, adventures in the remote mountains of Shanxi—while they all pursued their research, often encouraging and assisting one another. Though wars, politics, and illness would eventually interrupt their time together, the friendship lived on through letters, memories, and the inspiration to establish an institute—what would become the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies—dedicated to the study of China.
Once Upon a Time in Peking… A Very Special Friendship 京华旧忆，雅谊千秋
Photos, letters, and paintings | On display from September to December, 2025
Japan Friends of Harvard Concourse
CGIS South Building
1730 Cambridge St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Curated by:
Nancy Berliner, Wu Tung Senior Curator of Chinese Art, Museum of Fine Arts
Dorinda Elliott, Executive Director, Fairbank Center
Holly Fairbank, Executive Director, Maxine Greene Institute for Aesthetic Education and Social Imagination
Special Advisors: Annie Liang-Zhou and Abraham Zamcheck
Faculty Advisors:
William C. Kirby, TM Chang Professor of China Studies, Harvard University
Rana Mitter, ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations, Harvard Kennedy School
Special thanks to Huirong Ye, Alexander Yang, and Qin Zhang