The China Folk House Retreat is a Chinese folk house in

Harpers Ferry Harpers Ferry is a historic town in Jefferson County, West Virginia. It is located in the lower Shenandoah Valley. The population was 285 at the 2020 census. Situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, where the U.S. stat ...

, West Virginia, United States, reconstructed from its original location in

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked Provinces of China, province in Southwest China, the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is ...

in China. A non-profit organization dismantled and rebuilt it piece by piece with the goal to improve U.S. understanding of

Chinese culture Chinese culture () is one of the world's oldest cultures, originating thousands of years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia and is extremely diverse and varying, with customs and traditions varying grea ...

History

John Flower, director of

Sidwell Friends School Sidwell Friends School is a Quaker school located in Bethesda, Maryland and Washington, D.C., offering pre-kindergarten through high school classes. Founded in 1883 by Thomas W. Sidwell, its motto is ' ( en, Let the light shine out from all), al ...

's Chinese studies program, and his wife Pamela Leonard started bringing students to Yunnan in 2012 as part of a China fieldwork program. In 2014 Flower, Leonard, and their students found the house in a small village named Cizhong () in

Jianchuan County Jianchuan County () is a county in the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture located in the western part of Yunnan Province, China. The county is about southwest of Lijiang and north of Dali. The historical town of Shaxi in the southeast of the coun ...

of Yunnan, China. Before the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, they brought dozens of 11th and 12th-grade students to Yunnan to experience the

cultural Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...

and

natural Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are p ...

environment of this province every spring. The architectural style of this house is a blend of

Han Han may refer to: Ethnic groups * Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group. ** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese p ...

, Bai, Naxi and

Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dial ...

styles. The Cizhong Village is located in

eastern Himalaya ] The Eastern Himalayas extend from eastern Nepal across Northeast India, Bhutan, the Tibet Autonomous Region to Yunnan in China and northern Myanmar. The climate of this region is influenced by the monsoon of South Asia from June to September. It ...

, alongside the

Mekong River The Mekong or Mekong River is a trans-boundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's twelfth longest river and the third longest in Asia. Its estimated length is , and it drains an area of , discharging of water annuall ...

. It has a long history of Sino-foreign cultural exchanges. The

Paris Foreign Missions Society The Society of Foreign Missions of Paris (french: Société des Missions Etrangères de Paris, short M.E.P.) is a Roman Catholic missionary organization. It is not a religious institute, but an organization of secular priests and lay persons ...

established the in 1867. When they visited the village, Zhang Jianhua, owner of the house, invited them to his home. Zhang told them that the house was built in 1989, and would be flooded by a new

hydroelectric power station Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined and ...

. While the government built a new house for him one kilometer away, Flower came up with the idea of dismantling the house and rebuilding it in the United States. This house was built using

mortise and tenon A mortise and tenon (occasionally mortice and tenon) joint connects two pieces of wood or other material. Woodworkers around the world have used it for thousands of years to join pieces of wood, mainly when the adjoining pieces connect at right ...

structure, which made it easy to be dismantled.

Logistics

Flower and his students visited Zhang several times and eventually bought the house from him. After measurements and photographing, the whole house was dismantled, sent to

Tianjin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popul ...

and shipped to

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

, and finally to

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bur ...

. Since 2017, they have spent several years rebuilding the house in

, at the Friends Wilderness Center, following the traditional Chinese method of building. For the development of this project, Flower and Leonard formed the China Folk House Retreat.

Activities

The Chinese Ambassador

Qin Gang Qin Gang (; born 19 March 1966) is a Chinese diplomat and politician who has been serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2022, making him China's second highest ranked diplomat after CCP Politburo member Wang Yi. He previously served as Vi ...

visited it in June 2022. Pamela Leonard serves as the CEO of the organization. On November 2, 2022,

Kunming University of Science and Technology Kunming University of Science and Technology (KUST) () is in Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan Province, Southwestern China. As the goal by 2010, KUST was to become a key university with a strong science and engineering background. The universi ...

, the

Linden Centre The Linden Centre (喜林苑) is a boutique hotel and center for cultural exchange located in Xizhou, Yunnan in Southwest China. The original location is in a renovated Bai style courtyard home, one of Xizhou's heritage sites protected at the n ...

() and

held an online seminar on traditional Yunnan architecture, where the Chinese residential projects were discussed. Kunming University of Science and Technology will donate a batch of tiles to the project for the reconstruction.

References

External links

Official website
* {{YouTube, id=j5AizKWXalk, title=黄杰平谈天下事 11-11-2021 China Folk House in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

– China Daily video, November 9, 2022 Non-profit organizations based in West Virginia Chinese culture Cultural promotion organizations China–United States relations Cultural heritage conservation Houses in West Virginia Buildings and structures in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia