Harvard Bixi

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Harvard Bixi is a 17-foot-tall marble stele on a turtle pedestal, located in Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It sits north of Boylston Hall and west of Widener Library and weighs about 27 tons. The stele was given to Harvard in September 1936 by Chinese Harvard Alumni to celebrate the university’s tercentennial.

The stone was made around 1820 in Beijing and was originally a gift from the Jiaqing Emperor to Songyun, who governed Jiangsu and Jiangxi. The inscription on the stele is not fully known today; it was kept in the Old Summer Palace until its destruction in 1860 during the Second Opium War. The dragons carved on the sides and top are the only clear signs of its imperial past.

In the 1930s there were five Harvard Clubs in China, and more than 35 members helped raise support for the stele. Two attendees at the Tercentennial ceremony were Dr. J. Heng Liu, president of the Harvard Club of Nanking, and Fred Sze, president of the Harvard Club of Shanghai. The front of the stele was inscribed with new text, and Shih Hu is believed to have carved the inscription. The Chinese inscription commemorates Harvard’s tercentennial on behalf of Chinese alumni. An English translation provided in 1936 by Dr. Liu became the official translation in Harvard’s archives, though it reportedly left out a line about hoping for a brighter, more prosperous China.

Over time, acid rain and weathering have damaged the inscriptions. In the early 1980s, the Fogg Museum suggested moving the stele indoors, but the plan was dropped due to cost. A 1998 notice explained the stele’s origin and Harvard’s efforts to find an indoor location. Plans to relocate it to the Center for Government and International Studies were discussed, but it remained in Harvard Yard. Since 2004, multiple groups have shown interest in preserving or restoring it.

In 2009 Harvard began adding interpretive information at the base, and a signage designer was hired. In 2012 a project started to create a 3-D scan of the monument using a structured-light technique.