Buildings on the Campuses of Christian Universities and the Renaissance of China’s Traditional Architecture

From the end of the nineteenth century to the 1930s, China’s Christian universitiesChristian universities were the first to advocate a new style of Chinese and Western architecture in unique historical circumstances. This in turn served as a prelude to the revival of Chinese traditional architectural art. Due to a gradual awakening of domestic national consciousness, this new architectural style was regarded as symbolic in the way it inherited and carried forward Chinese traditional culture, and it gradually developed into a modern architectural style with special significance. The architectural style of China’s Christian universities and the resulting revival of Chinese traditional architectural art are remarkable historical evidence of the two-way flow of Chinese and Western cultures, and the vivid interplay between globalizationglobalization and localizationlocalization in the process of glocalization in China’s Christian universities. In this paper, the author demonstrates this vivid interplay by illustrations of Henry K. Murphy’s formalist architectural design and John L. StuartJohn L. Stuart’s dream of a Yenching UniversityYenching University campus which was fully Chinese in spirit yet capable of facilitating international interaction. Prof. Dong argues also that Western culture had indeed helped the revival and transformation of traditional Chinese architectural art, hence creating a new and distinctive form of architectural design in buildings on the campuses of Christian universities in China.