The Yangshi Lei Family: Imperial Architects of Qing Dynasty China (1662-1900)

Geographic Connections

Heading northwest from Yongxiu County, Jiangxi, along the Xiushui River valley, you reach the ancestral village of the Lei clan. Continuing north some 100 kilometers brings you to Jiujiang Prefecture, then onward across Poyang Lake to Nanjing—这是 the traditional route from Jiangxi to Beijing in the early Qing. It was along this road that Yongxiu’s Lei Fada first entered the Forbidden City during the Kangxi era, beginning the longest family lineage in Chinese architectural history.

I. A Carpenter Enters the Forbidden City: 1683

In 1683 (Kangxi twenty-second year), a thirty-year-old carpenter named Lei Fada left his hometown in Yongxiu County, Jiangxi, traveling northward by water: Gan River, then Poyang Lake, then the Yangtze. His destination was Beijing, his identity that of an ordinary southern craftsman—but he was about to alter the course of over two centuries of Qing imperial architecture.

When Lei Fada arrived in Beijing, the Forbidden City was in the middle of its most ambitious post-war reconstruction: the rebuilding of the Hall of Supreme Harmony (Taihedian), the most politically charged building in all of imperial China, badly damaged during the fall of the Ming. The project required the best craftsmen from across the empire. Lei Fada’s exceptional carpentry skills brought him into the Imperial Construction Office (Yangshi Fang)—a specialized bureau that drafted architectural drawings and produced three-dimensional scale models called “烫样” (tangyang, “scalded models”).

Lei Fada excelled in this environment. Without any modern drafting tools, he could draw precise plans for complex palace buildings using only rulers and compasses. Even more remarkably, he could transform a flat drawing into a foldable, three-dimensional paper-and-glue scale model that the Emperor could literally pick up, unfold, and inspect from inside. This was visualization at its finest in 17th-century China—a way of “building” the building before any stone was laid.

By the late Kangxi era, Lei Fada had been promoted to Chief Drafter of the Imperial Construction Office—effectively making him the chief architect of Qing imperial buildings.

II. From Kangxi to Guangxu: 238 Years of Family Inheritance

The Chief Drafter position at the Imperial Construction Office became, for nearly the entire Qing dynasty, a hereditary post held by members of the Lei family—a phenomenon absolutely unique in Chinese architectural history.

Second generation: Lei Jinyu (son of Lei Fada). He led the early expansion of the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) during the Kangxi-Yongzheng transition.

Third generation: Lei Tingchang. He led the most ambitious projects of the Qianlong era, including the massive reconstruction of Yuanmingyuan beginning in 1771. His design for the Western-style Palaces (Xiyang Lou), combining European Baroque with Chinese architectural traditions, created a uniquely “Sino-Western” building style found nowhere else in the world.

Fourth generation: Lei Jiaxi and Lei Jiawei. They took over during the Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns. After a devastating fire at Yuanmingyuan in 1836, they led the rebuilding efforts. Lei Jiaxi’s design of the Tongyueyuan Grand Theater remains one of the largest ancient theater structures ever built in China.

Fifth generation: Lei Jingxiu. He lived through the Xianfeng and Tongzhi reigns—China’s most turbulent period. In 1860, when Anglo-French forces burned Yuanmingyuan to the ground, Lei Jingxiu followed the Empress Dowager Cixi in flight to Rehe (Chengde), risking his life along the way to save crucial architectural drawings and scalded models from the Imperial Construction Office—one of the family’s greatest contributions to architectural history.

Sixth generation: Lei Siqi. He led the most important architectural project of the Guangxu era: the reconstruction of the Summer Palace (Yiheyuan). Begun in 1886 and largely completed by 1895, the Summer Palace was the last great imperial garden built in traditional Chinese style.

Seventh generation: Lei Xiancai (grandson of Lei Tingchang), the last Chief Drafter. In 1900, the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing, destroying most of the Imperial Construction Office’s drawings and scalded models. Lei Xiancai died in poverty in 1913, ending 238 years of unbroken family inheritance—seven generations in total.

III. Scalded Models: China’s Foldable Architectural Code

The Yangshi Lei family’s most significant contribution to world architectural heritage is their invention of the “scalded model” (烫样)—a foldable three-dimensional building model made from paperboard, wood shavings, and glue.

The construction process was meticulous: cut paperboard components to scale, fill walls and roofs with wood shavings for proper thickness, glue everything together. Models were typically 1:100 or 1:50 scale, designed to be folded, disassembled, so the Emperor could inspect a building’s design from outside and inside simultaneously.

The precision of these models is astonishing. Lei Fada’s scalded model for the rebuilt Hall of Supreme Harmony corresponds almost exactly to the building as it actually stands today—achieving this in the 18th century without modern calculation tools required generations of accumulated family expertise and material intuition.

Tragically, most Yangshi Lei scalded models were destroyed in 1900 when the Eight-Nation Alliance sacked Beijing. Fewer than 100 examples survive today, preserved in the Palace Museum, the National Library, Peking University, and Tsinghua University—irreplaceable physical archives of Chinese architectural history.

IV. The Hall of Supreme Harmony: Lei Family and the Forbidden City

The Lei family’s relationship with the Forbidden City spanned the entire Qing era. Major works include:

Hall of Supreme Harmony reconstruction (1683-1695): Led by Lei Fada. This was the most politically charged construction project of the Kangxi era. The Hall’s final form was established during this reconstruction—from the Ming’s nine-bay layout expanded to Qing’s eleven bays, and height increased from 35 to 37 meters.

Qianqing Palace, Kunning Palace, Jiaotai Hall maintenance (1756): Led by Lei Tingchang. These three halls form the “Inner Court” of the Forbidden City. Lei Tingchang preserved their original forms while performing delicate restoration.

Yangxin Hall renovation (1723): Lei Jinyu participated. Originally just a resting pavilion for the Emperor, Yongzheng transformed it into the daily working and living quarters of the Emperor. From Yongzheng onward, all Qing Emperors lived and worked here—making it effectively the political center of the last 200 years of imperial China.

Qianlong Garden renovation (1772): Led by Lei Tingchang. This small garden in the northeast corner of the Forbidden City became the retirement residence for abdicated Emperors. Lei Tingchang’s intricate interior designs here remain key conservation priorities for the Palace Museum today.

Summer Palace reconstruction (1886-1895): Led by Lei Siqi. Covering 290 hectares, the Summer Palace was the last great imperial garden built in traditional Chinese style—the pinnacle of Chinese classical garden art.

V. The Forgotten Architectural Dynasty

The Yangshi Lei family’s technical achievements have long been overlooked by Western architectural historians. The reason is straightforward—Chinese traditional master-apprentice and family inheritance systems, unlike Western academic architectural education, lack systematic written documentation. The Lei family’s techniques were primarily transmitted through scalded models and drawings—and most of these physical artifacts were destroyed in 1900.

But within Chinese architectural scholarship, the Yangshi Lei status has long been established. Zhu Qiqian, founder of the Society for the Study of Chinese Architecture (Zhongguo Yingzao Xueshe),专门 studied Yangshi Lei archives in the 1930s. The famous architect Liang Sicheng devoted an entire chapter of his A History of Chinese Architecture to the Lei family’s contributions.

The Lei family story is, at its core, a snapshot of China’s traditional “family inheritance” craft system—a system that allowed some technologies to span generations, but also meant that any disruption (war, family decline) could erase centuries of accumulated knowledge. The 1900 invasion not only burned the Imperial Construction Office’s drawings and scalded models; it burned a 238-year family legacy.

For 238 years and seven generations, the Yangshi Lei family carried the wisdom of Qing imperial architectural construction. Their scalled models today sit quietly in the Palace Museum’s archives, silently telling every visitor the story of a forgotten Chinese architectural dynasty—its brilliance and its tragedy.