China Folk House Retreat

The China Folk House Retreat is a Chinese folk house in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, United States, reconstructed from its original location in Yunnan in China. A non-profit organization dismantled and rebuilt it piece by piece with the goal to improve U.S. understanding of Chinese culture.[1][2]

China Folk House Retreat
General information
Architectural style
  • Han
  • Bai
  • Naxi
  • Tibetan
Address305 Friends Way
Town or cityHarpers Ferry, West Virginia
CountryUnited States
Coordinates39°09′27″N 77°50′37″W

History

John Flower, director of Sidwell Friends School's Chinese studies program, and his wife Pamela Leonard started bringing students to Yunnan in 2012 as part of a China fieldwork program.[1] In 2014 Flower, Leonard, and their students found the house in a small village named Cizhong (Chinese: 茨 中) in Jianchuan County of Yunnan, China.[3] Before the COVID-19 pandemic, they brought dozens of 11th and 12th-grade students to Yunnan to experience the cultural and natural environment of this province every spring.[1] The architectural style of this house is a blend of Han, Bai, Naxi and Tibetan styles.[2]

The Cizhong Village is located in eastern Himalaya, alongside the Mekong River. It has a long history of Sino-foreign cultural exchanges. The Paris Foreign Missions Society established the Cizhong Catholic Church in 1867.[4][5] 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. 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.[2] This house was built using mortise and tenon structure, which made it easy to be dismantled.[3]

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 and shipped to Baltimore, and finally to West Virginia. Since 2017, they have spent several years rebuilding the house in Harpers Ferry, 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.[2]

Activities

The Chinese Ambassador Qin Gang visited it in June 2022.[3]

Pamela Leonard serves as the CEO of the organization.[6]

On November 2, 2022, Kunming University of Science and Technology, the Linden Centre (Chinese: 大理州喜林苑客栈) and Sidwell Friends School 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.[7]

References
  1. Wu, Daniel (July 8, 2022). "A Chinese farmhouse in West Virginia bridges politics and a pandemic". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved November 4, 2022.
  2. Zhao, Huanxin (November 3, 2022). "'Crazy' idea highlights Chinese culture". China Daily. Retrieved November 4, 2022.
  3. 王旭泉 (Wang Xuquan) (June 30, 2022). "让中美友谊大厦更加坚实 ——秦刚大使访问中国民居项目 (Make the China-US Friendship Building more solid ——Ambassador Qin Gang visits the China Folk House Retreat)". China Daily (in Chinese (China)). Retrieved November 5, 2022.
  4. Galipeau, Brendan A. (2018). "A Tibetan Catholic Christmas in China: Ethnic Identity and Encounters with Ritual and Revitalization". Asian Ethnology. 77 (1/2): 353–370. ISSN 1882-6865. JSTOR 26604845.
  5. Zhu, Tiequan; Chen, Jian; Hui, Ren; Gong, Li; Zhang, Weihong; Zhang, Yuchen (September 22, 2013). "Spectroscopic Characterization of the Architectural Painting from the Cizhong Catholic Church of Yunnan Province, China". Analytical Letters. 46 (14): 2253–2264. doi:10.1080/00032719.2013.796559. ISSN 0003-2719. S2CID 95544598.
  6. Pechuekonis, Lynn (May 2, 2022). "Bolivar Project Earns Excellence in Preservation Award". Harpers Ferry-Bolivar Historic Town Foundation. Retrieved November 13, 2022.
  7. "中美三地线上举办云南传统建筑研讨会--国际--人民网 (Online seminars on Yunnan traditional architecture was held in three places of China and US)". world.people.com.cn. Retrieved November 5, 2022.
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