- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Interview and article by Chenyan Wang
Meet Zhang Qin on Thursday April 2nd for a conversation on her recently published book, A Solitary Traveler in the Long Night at the China Institute! Find more information and register HERE.
Who gets to decide what we remember?
Zhang Qin is not easy to pin down — geographically or otherwise. An architectural historian who moves between China, Boston, Paris, and New York, between archives and fieldwork, between modern Chinese history and the living fabric of cities, what grounds her through all that movement is an abiding devotion to the people behind the buildings — the architects who shaped the modern Chinese cityscape yet were left largely unrecorded, their stories dissolving quietly at the edges of history.
In a recent interview with Chenyan, Professor Zhang shared her profound insights into modern Chinese architectural history and her dedicated process of "painting portraits" through words for the masters who have long remained silent in the corners of history. What emerges is not just a portrait of an architect, but a meditation on memory, authorship, and the fragile dignity of human experience.
I still don't feel that I wrote this book in the usual sense, I think 'recorder' is a better word for me than 'writer.'
The Solitary Traveler She Found
Zhang Qin's most celebrated work, A Solitary Traveler in the Long Night, is a biography of Tong Jun — one of modern China's pioneering architects, co-founder of Allied Architects (华盖建筑事务所), and a figure who, despite leading what was once one of China's largest private architectural firms, remained largely outside the mainstream spotlight of architectural history.
The book's title captures something essential about Tong Jun, and it turns out, about the kind of scholar Zhang Qin is. "He was never really in the mainstream," she said with a quiet smile. "And neither am I."
What drew her to Tong Jun in the first place? "I began with curiosity," she told us. "And my ignorance." She paused before continuing: "At the beginning, there was not a grand reason. I just felt there was someone standing there very quietly in history, and no one was really listening. Over time, I realized maybe it was his stillness that held me."
The research stretched well beyond the five years it took to formally write the book. Zhang Qin described the process as less like authorship and more like archaeology: patient, circuitous, guided by instinct as much as method. "It was more like sitting with scattered pieces," she said. "Documents, voices, memories — for a long time, slowly letting them come closer to each other." A friend once compared her to a truffle pig, sniffing her way through archives. She laughed when she recalled it.
A Recorder, Not a Writer
Ask Zhang Qin what she was doing in those years of research, and she will push back gently on the word "writing." "I still don't feel that I wrote this book in the usual sense," she said. "I think 'recorder' is a better word for me than 'writer.'"
This is not false modesty. It reflects a deeply considered stance on the ethics of historical documentation. When oral memories contradicted written records, she resisted the impulse to adjudicate between them. "Sometimes I would place different accounts side by side and let the reader decide," she explained. "Because sometimes you simply cannot know. And to pretend otherwise would not be honest."
She was equally resistant to hagiography. Asked whether she sought to portray Tong Jun as a master to be admired from a distance, she shook her head. "I didn't want to turn him into a figure to admire from a distance. That kind of writing might be comforting, but it's not honest." Tong Jun, she reminded us, lived through an extraordinarily complicated era of modern Chinese history. "I tried to stay close enough to see his contradictions, his limits, as well as his persistence. Sometimes the most respectful thing is not to add anything."
Her narrative approach reflected this ethos. Rather than organizing Tong Jun's life chronologically, she followed a more associative, non-linear structure. It was not entirely a choice, she admitted. "Sometimes what people remembered didn't match what was written. And memories are never linear." She paused. "Understanding isn't either. So I didn't want the book to pretend." In an era where narratives are often shaped for clarity, inspiration, or consumption, this approach feels almost radical. It insists that complexity is not a flaw to be corrected, but a condition to be preserved.
What It Means to Be a Cosmopolitan
One of the most resonant threads running through A Solitary Traveler in the Long Night is Tong Jun's self-identification as a cosmopolitan: a label that was not a neutral one in his time, or in ours.
"Cosmopolitan" carries different valences depending on the era and context in which it is spoken. For Tong Jun, trained in the West, fluent in multiple intellectual traditions, and committed to a distinctly Chinese sense of place, it was less a political statement than a way of being in the world.
"He was open to ideas, to different worlds," Zhang Qin reflected, "but not in a way that erased where he stood." In a moment of geopolitical fragmentation, when the idea of cosmopolitanism is often treated with suspicion, as naïveté, or even disloyalty, she sees something worth recovering in his example. "For him, I think cosmopolitan was not a label. It was a way of thinking. It was simply natural for him."
Today, as global tensions intensify and many who once called themselves "citizens of the world" feel increasingly unclaimed by any nation or community, Zhang Qin offers a different reading: that a free heart is not the same as a rootless one. Tong Jun, she believes, held both.
In today’s fragmented global landscape, where the idea of cosmopolitanism is once again contested, Zhang’s reading feels particularly resonant. It suggests that intellectual openness is not a privilege, but a practice—one that requires both courage and grounding.
The Illusion of Choice
When asked about the defining choices of Tong Jun’s life, Zhang offers a quietly unsettling reflection. “Sometimes we think we made the choices… but we should ask how many choices we actually had.”
For Tong Jun, living through periods of political upheaval and constraint, the space for choice was limited. Yet within those constraints, one decision remained clear: to be an architect.
Not as a profession alone, but as a commitment to a way of thinking—rooted in integrity, independence, and what Zhang calls “a free heart.”
This reframing shifts the conversation from heroic decision-making to something more nuanced: the ability to hold onto one’s values within the conditions one is given.
Architecture Is Still About How We Live
Throughout our conversation, Zhang Qin returned again and again to a question she clearly carries with her: what is architecture, really, for?
"Today, everything moves very, very fast," she said, "and architecture can easily become fragmented: image, technology, efficiency, commercial interests. A lot of loud noises." She cited the recurring conversation in architectural circles, in China and beyond, about whether architecture itself is "dead" or "in crisis." Her answer was measured but clear. "Architecture is still, I think, about how we live and how we remember. Perhaps the responsibility is very simple, but not easy."
Tong Jun's own words, which she quoted from memory, feel like a guiding principle she has absorbed over years of writing about him: "Being an architect requires authentic integrity and a free heart." It is a sentence she believes applies as much to intellectual life as to the built environment, as much to the present moment as to Tong Jun's turbulent century.
On the question of AI and the humanities, she was unexpectedly optimistic, and pointed. "Technology and soul are indispensable to each other," she said. "Without soul, technology lacks a foundation." She noted, with some delight, that at Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, "Art" precedes "Science" in the name. "And I don't think that's an accident."
Heritage preservation, she argued, should be understood not as a niche specialty but as general education: essential knowledge for a generation navigating a fast-changing world. "History is not only about the past," she said. "It also illuminates the future." She hopes more young people will come to that understanding on their own terms, not through experts telling them what to preserve, but through the experience of walking through cities, touching old walls, reading the lives embedded in forgotten corners.
Be a "Champion of Curiosity"
Toward the end of our conversation, we asked what advice she would give to younger scholars studying architectural history.
"Don't rush to conclusions," she offered. "Stay longer with your material. Let it resist you a little." And then, the advice she seems to have taken most to heart herself: "Be a champion of curiosity." She mentioned a sign in Harvard's library bearing that phrase, which she clearly loves. "And if possible, return to history from time to time. Because some lives do not reveal themselves immediately. Sometimes you have to stay with them, for years, before something becomes clear."
Zhang Qin has spent years staying with Tong Jun's life. She came away from it not with answers, but with what feels more lasting: courage, integrity, sincerity — words that, she told us, stopped being abstract for her somewhere in the middle of all those documents and voices and scattered fragments of memory.
About the Interviewee:
Zhang Qin is an independent scholar at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University whose work spans architectural history, urban planning, and heritage conservation. She holds a B.A. in Architecture from Southeastern University and an MSc and PhD in Urban Planning from Tongji University, with a lifelong focus on the preservation of historical and cultural heritage. She is also the Secretary-General and Vice-President of the Ruan Yisan Heritage Foundation, an organization dedicated to the conservation of China's built legacy.
To learn more about the AAPI architects transforming our neighborhoods, landscape, and understandings of the world, join us for Serica Storytellers: Architecture Serving Neighborhoods & Memories with acclaimed architect Bille Tsien, in conversation with architect Calvin Tsao! Food and drinks will be provided alongside the discussion and community gathering.
