Old houses in China's countryside are being dismantled and reassembled for the nation's new rich.

Very interesting article in the China daily talking about the resale market for Ming and Qing dynasty Chinese traditional homes which are disassembled, transported, repaired and then resold to restaurants, clubs or wealthy collectors.  Now this is an interesting topic which I could easily get lost in as it just touches on so many interesting elements from Hui Zhou architecture to Chinese antique restorations to wooden architectural carvings.

The article  is basically a slimmed down version of another Chinese language article floating around the net. Its not a bad article, though it leaves out some of the more interesting details like such as how the industry works.

For example, the middlemen buyers tend to be divided up amongst two categories: those with ample capital and those who as essentially un-financed. Essentially those who are “un-financed” will buy the house and resell it right away to recoup their investment at a 20 to 30% profit margin. “Financed sellers” are those who have enough spare capital to buy the house, undertake all the repair and restoration work and then resell it in restored form at a 40 to 50 % profit.

The other interesting aspect left out is detail on how much time and effort goes into the whole process.  One home took ten workers several weeks just to disassemble and haul away it away piece by piece in a dozen different large trucks. Quite a task considering each individual piece from support beams to wood carvings to stone had to be meticulously tagged and documented in order to be reassembled off-site. Before restoration can even start, a methodical checking of each piece had to be made to determine which wood must be replaced, which carvings repaired etc. Then there is the restoration and reassembly itself – a complex process involving carpentry, masonry, painters and wood carvers.

An old chinese courtyard home being reassembled and restored

What’s interesting is the trade has moved online as well, with websites listing both complete homes (in restored and un-restored form) as well as individual salvaged components like ornate wooden architectural carvings, brick carvings, stone and even reclaimed wood.

The China daily version is below – still a fascinating read. For the brave, here is also the more complete Chinese language version of the article.

Show homes
2011-07-28 08:02
By Xu Junqian (China Daily)

Old houses in the Yangtze River Delta’s countryside are being dismantled and reassembled for display in the gardens of the nation’s new rich. Xu Junqian reports.

At a hidden warehouse, on a vast expanse of open moorland in Dongyang, Zhejiang province (在(浙江)东阳市歌山镇西宅村), a group of middle-aged carpenters are busy working on a pile of pillars and corbels, beams and windows. Spread over the 10,000-square-meter clandestine locale that has no name or address – marked only by a muddy path – they have been carefully dismantled from century-old houses scattered throughout the Yangtze River Delta countryside.

Once reassembled, they will move into the gardens of the country’s nouveau riche.Tired of filling their working and living rooms with antique vases, ink paintings, calligraphy and 19th-century hardwood furniture, the emerging upper class is looking for something new to show off their wealth and cultural sensitivities.

And buying these quaint houses that date back to as early as the Ming (1368-1644) or Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, is becoming a popular choice.

The trend has been growing in the recent years, Zhang Zhu’an (张祝安), co-owner of the nameless warehouse site, says. “More people, including the not-so-affluent, are seeing them as an investment.”

These ancient houses can range from 300 to 400 square meters, with some even reaching 1,000 square meters. While they rival the size of the buyers’ homes, these collectors’ items are mostly for display.

Zhang, a 61-year-old Dongyang native, and his partner, the main investor of the warehouse, started the business three years ago. Although the carpenter-turned-businessman sidesteps questions about how lucrative the business is, he acknowledges it has been “acceptable” from the beginning. Now, they sell one house every two or three months.

The older the house, the pricier it gets, Zhang says. “But the style of the house, its condition or the status of its former owner – say he is a famous political figure – can also add to the value.”

With a team of about 10 carpenters, who double as porters, Zhang’s warehouse is the biggest of its kind in Zhejiang and possibly in the country.

Over the past few years, more than 10 houses have been relocated from remote villages to be reassembled and refurbished in the warehouse and then dispatched to the properties of affluent buyers in Hangzhou, Shanghai and even as far away as Beijing.

After restoration, this Qing Dynasty courtyard will sell for more then ten million RMB

Currently, there are nine houses here, some of which are ready to be “taken away”. Most are typical southern Chinese residences, featuring upturned eaves, elaborate woodcarvings and thick and straight pillars.

“This one is not that ancient. It dates from the end of the Qing Dynasty,” says a 49-year-old carpenter, surnamed Pan, referring to a door from a typical Anhui-style house, currently the most popular variety on the market, that he has been working on for five weeks.

“I heard the whole house was bought for several hundred thousands yuan. But this door alone can be sold for more than 10 million yuan ($1.55 million) after I’m done with polishing it,” Pan says.

There are about five or six similar warehouses in Dongyang, a city best known for its ancient craft of woodcarving, Zhang says. Just a few meters from his site is a similar, but much smaller, warehouse with four dismantled houses.

“People may think it is easy to start a business like this because of a huge supply of carpenters here,” Zhang says. “But good houses are becoming increasingly hard to find, as they have either been taken apart by collectors or demolished by their owners to make way for new modern buildings.”

Zhang says that while his special “hunting crew” travels the country looking for houses, he also networks with furniture recyclers and secondhand storeowners in the area.”If they come to know of someone who wants to sell his house, they will immediately call me,” Zhang says, adding that he only goes for structures that are at least 70 percent intact.

“For the province’s growing number of rich people, such houses represent the ultimate collectors’ item,” says Yu Feng, vice-chairman of Collection Association Club of Yiwu, the city neighboring Dongyang.

“After all, the vases, paintings and precious chairs need a place where they can be put. And what better choice than a heritage house,” Yu says.

The club, founded in 2005, has about 300 members in Yiwu. As the world’s largest small commodity center, it attracts hordes of the parvenus.

Every year, they host exhibitions to showcase their art collections. An antiques market that can accommodate 500 stalls also opened earlier this year.

“I can’t say how many people are doing this (collecting houses), as we don’t have such figures in the club,” says Yu, whose own collection includes five houses.

They occupy a 2,000-square-meter space that the logistics tycoon has specially rented.According to some industry insiders, a Yiwu businessman has 100 such homes from all over the country in his collection.”If you start early enough, you can get a house for no more than 50,000 yuan,” Yu says.But with more people entering the market, the average price has easily doubled.

By Xu Junqian (China Daily)

The profit for middlemen like Zhang has dropped from 50 to about 30 percent of the price.For Yu and others like him, the biggest headache remains finding a place for their house collections. “After all, it’s not that easy to buy land. And once you move a house, it’s not likely you can do so again,” Yu says.

But even as some worry about where to put their gigantic collections, others have found ways to make money out of them.
Zhu Youfu, a retired local official in Yiwu’s Fotang village has turned his collection – worth millions of yuan – into a tourist attraction in his hometown.

With a nearly 1,000-square-meter house built at the beginning of the 1800s and several other smaller ones, the site has become a recreational complex that also offers dining, accommodation and sightseeing.
Yang Handong, meanwhile, is more generous with sharing his collection.Yang is the owner of Hujiang Group, the country’s biggest thread producer, which is also based in Yiwu.

Apart from an underground museum that is home to 300 old vases and paintings located below the teahouse he runs, the antiques aficionado has also built a park behind his factory for his seven heritage houses. Admission is free to the public.

The purchase of old houses can be controversial.

Chen Rongjun, director of Dongyang Relic Protection Office, says that although it is legitimate to buy these houses not categorized as “relics under protection”, the houses, which are one of the few legacies of the local culture, become “dead” once they leave their original locations.

According to the local government, only 207 homes in the area are categorized as “relics under protection”, leaving 1,560 houses labeled as just “relics”, for not meeting one or another of the protection category standards.

“Homes with historical value are disappearing fast. More villagers are willing to exchange their homes for money to build new villas, and we are not there to stop them,” Chen says.But Zhang, the middleman, is defensive. “We are far more professional than the owners while dealing with these houses, which are usually in a seriously dilapidated state when they come to us,” he says.

“It’s true we are making money from them but not by tearing them down,” he adds. “Rather, we are restoring them to their former glory, which is definitely better than letting them suffer further wear and tear.”

Other online resources:

	The Hong Kong Heritage Museum’s exhibition of Huizhou vernacular architecture. There is a great book from this exhibition available at the museum shop, however I have never seen it for sale online.
	The Peabody Essex Museum’s “Yin Yu Tang” is a qing dynasty home on permanent exhibit at the museum. The home can be explored online via a very cool interactive guide.
	b2bgujian.com and szgujian.com are Chinese websites specializing in the sale of reclaimed and rebuilt traditional chinese homes (the sites are in Chinese only). The forum section is quite fascinating..
	A google image search in Chinese for Huishou style wood carvings.

This content comes from The specialists guide to Chinese antiques located at http://www.antique-chinese-furniture.com/blog/ For more articles please visit The specialists guide to Chinese antiques - A unique insiders peek at the world of Chinese antiques & reproductions, Asian culture, exotic decor and oriental-inspired design from the far east.

Related posts:

2. A to Z: Restoring chinese wood carvings, wooden screens and carved architectural elements.
4. The 47,000 USD dollar tooth brush holder – Chinese porcelain brush pot in owners bathroom sells at auction for staggering sum.
6. Carved wooden architectural elements salvaged from traditional Chinese homes gain a new lease on life…

This content comes from The specialists guide to Chinese antiques located at http://www.antique-chinese-furniture.com/blog/ For more articles please visit The specialists guide to Chinese antiques - A unique insiders peek at the world of Chinese antiques & reproductions, Asian culture, exotic decor and oriental-inspired design from the far east.

Related posts:

2. Guide to antique doors and antique door panels.

I was in the warehouse just a few days ago, looking over a batch of antique door panels which just came in and it really reminded me just how cool some of these pieces are, especially the iron hardware, the various textures, and the overall character and charm of these bits of history.

In the raw and just in…

You can see all shapes and all sizes come in from smaller doors from private homes, to huge double doors which look almost as if they came from the doors guarding a castle.

Restoration and cleaning them up.

Often the door frames may be badly damaged and need to be reconstructed. Supports or other missing sections are replaced in the same manner and construction as the original.

Here you can see damaged sections which have been replaced using old wood, in this case the bottom stretchers on the frame and a support for the lock in the back.

Once both structures of the doors and frames have been repaired the doors can be hung in the frames once more.

Finally, missing hardware will be replaced and wax or a clear coat of lacquer will be applied to the wood, with the end result similar to this solid wood antique door at asian-collections.

Salvaged as materials; a second life.

Sometimes doors are simply treated as salvaged wood and used as material. The frightening pace of construction in China, means that as people trade in their old Chinese traditional courtyard houses and hutong dwellings for new high rise buildings salvaged building materials abound and doors are no exception to the rule.

Uses in decorating, remodeling and construction

Essentially, these are architectural antiques and construction companies like this one (this one is named Demxx Deconstruction) are starting realize customers can incorporate these elements into their home and consequently, are beginning to import salvaged old doors for projects.

And then there is these two ideas for converting antique panels and doors which I came across on the blog of a lighting designer, and are absolutely brilliant. “Camouflaging a refrigerator with door panels” is by far one of the best ideas I have seen so far. Kudo’s to Sherwood Cox who created this particular kitchen!

There is no reason why this cannot be applied with oriental door panels as well. In fact, I have a friend who has done so in his place (unfortunately I have not taken any photos yet).

Or they can be built into your home or apartment like the owner of this spectacular home in Maui did by incorporating Asian influences. In order to enter the master suite, you need to pass through these antique Chinese doors which he imported from Indonesia. It looks great and an added value is, it increase the overall value of the real estate.

Conversion from salvage into beautiful furniture

Some people turn them into desks like this “do it your self,” Antique-Door Desk made with salvaged architectural elements and an old door.

The same idea has been applied here with a vintage door which have converted into dining table. This one from Asiatic Treasures, was created by building a base for a brightly painted Vintage Tibetan Door panel.

Tables made from old doors is not a new idea, and it works well for this old door dining table

Though they range from large to small, space seems not to be an issue with doors, as they are flat and lean nicely against the wall as seen in this smaller Bohemian boutique. “Old door” cabinets are an interesting “medieval sort of look” as well, even if this particular one in our reference catalog is made from a reproduction.

Any other good examples? Let us know!

This content comes from The specialists guide to Chinese antiques located at http://www.antique-chinese-furniture.com/blog/ For more articles please visit The specialists guide to Chinese antiques - A unique insiders peek at the world of Chinese antiques & reproductions, Asian culture, exotic decor and oriental-inspired design from the far east.

Related posts:

2. Trend Guide: Rustic furniture made from reclaimed elm and other salvaged woods
4. Guide to Chinese Furniture – Part 1) What is considered an antique?
6. Guide to Chinese Furniture – Part 2) “Converted” antiques

Reclaimed & salvaged materials are environmentally friendly in that there are no new trees cut down to make the piece. Sources of wood may be old railroad ties, beams from old houses that have been demolished or even old doors. Old elm tends to be a favorite as Elm in fairly common in China. Pine is also an option as well. Other woods are also used like cypress, walnut or beech though these woods are much less common and not available in large quantities.

Since the material has been aged it tends to be more stable then new wood (which must otherwise be kiln dried and chemically treated before it can be made to be stable). In essence, pieces created from salvaged materials are antique in a very unusual way – as the materials themselves have their own story, rather then the finished piece. Finishes are less of an issue to as rather then spend time carefully creating the right distressed finish, the focus is on the already distressed natural appearance of the wood. Construction is typically using the traditional methods of tongue/groove and Chinese joinery.Reclaimed wood furniture tends to fall within either one of following three classifications:

1. Antique / Vintage: Often these are antique farm items which have simply been given a clean up. In other cases they have been stripped down and their original finish removed. Often traces of the original finish & color remain giving each piece its own unique “hue.”
   1. 
2. Salvaged & Rebuilt: Old doors converted into tables tops with bases added are a good example of this. The prime element here is that a good portion of the piece is in fact antique and can be distinguished as so.
   1. 
3. New designs from old materials: These are basically new pieces built with primarily reclaimed materials and its for this reason that the line between salvaged and new can become a bit blurry. The dining table below from ACF China Co as well as the “Haider Natural” Dining Furniture from Horchow Collection & Four Hands are good example of this. The design on the Horchow table has clearly been updated for the western buyer as the bottom stretcher would not an original feature on a Chinese type of table.
   1. 

So, where is it reclaimed wood furniture being sold on the web? What are the popular looks?

Here are a few nicer examples:

“Haider Natural” Dining Furniture from Horchow Collection & Four Hands

Reclaimed Elm Table from Neiman Marcus.

Blue Wash Console Table from Wisteria

Reclaimed Elm Doorwood Coffee Table

From the The Olde Good Things Webstore. Looks so similar I wonder if it originally came from us?!

RECLAIMED WOOD FURNITURE from GreenTea Designs

Other nice pieces of reclaimed wood furniture out there?

Share them with us! Send them in or post the links here…

This content comes from The specialists guide to Chinese antiques located at http://www.antique-chinese-furniture.com/blog/ For more articles please visit The specialists guide to Chinese antiques - A unique insiders peek at the world of Chinese antiques & reproductions, Asian culture, exotic decor and oriental-inspired design from the far east.

Related posts:

2. Guide to Chinese Furniture – Part 2) “Converted” antiques
4. Guide to Chinese Furniture – Part 6) Custom Built
6. Guide to Chinese Furniture – Part 4) New Reproductions

Photos of these two cabinets have been floating around on our file server for quite a while and I have been meaning to put them up here as another excellent example of differences in quality between Chinese antique workshops and restoration as well as in Chinese Country Antique Furniture in general. These are both essentially the same piece but restored in a different manner by two different factories. They are both restored antiques, both a once fairly common Mongolian style antique cabinets and even the dimensions are approximately the same. Piece A (bright red one) comes from a smaller workshop owned/operated by George, a gentleman who has worked with Chinese antiques for more then 20 years. He services mostly foreign customers and says he offers “good quality.” The other piece (Deep burgundy red) was purchased from Raymond, a larger volume based, Beijing wholesaler who claims to offer “good quality product.” Lets examine the differences to see which factory really does offer “quality” and which one is simply inexpensive.

Its the details which count

The first place the differences are evident is in the overall attention to detail. George’s cabinet has been carefully restored with extra attention paid to small details. However, Raymond’s cabinet has been sloppily restored. Area’s where the lacquer has been rubbed off have not been touched up and instead, have been given a quick coat of wax instead – thus saving costs on the lacquering. Simple (IE inexpensive) fittings have been fitted to the door, instead of the large, more functional (IE more expensive) hardware seen on George’s cabinet. Even the painting on the doors of the cabinet alludes to “cheap” – its style clearly from the 1970/1980′s and thus the un-restored cabinet itself probably was much cheaper at the time of purchase.

The original un-restored cabinet would have had a round circular style fitting enabling the owner to lock the doors and drawers together in one action. Impressions of the original hardware can still be seen one both cabinets. Possibly removed during the 1970′s during China’s great leap forward the un-restored cabinet may have already been missing this hardware. But on George’s cabinet, the time has been taken to touch up this area so it looks relatively crisp and clean. On Raymond’s cabinet, this element has been skipped over completely.

Then there is the sides of the cabinet. Often embellishments become damaged, fallen off and then lost over time in China’s harsh peasant countryside. Depending on who restores the piece these embellishments may be added back on or sometimes skipped all together. I am guessing the embellishments on George’s cabinet was either retained or carefully recreated true to the original form. On Raymond’s cabinet, a down and dirty board has been added to the side with minimal carving detail (again – cheaper) and an even sloppier painting. Unfortunately we didn’t take a photo of the insides of the cabinet, but if I remember correctly, the shelf inside George’s cabinet was made using a relatively thick board. Raymond’s? A flimsy peice of wood which looked as if it would break before supporting any amount of weight.

So which claim is correct? George or Raymond? On a scale of 1 to 10, I would put George at a quality level of at least 6. Raymond’s cabinet is what Chinese suppliers love to call “rustic,” however, I have seen good quality rustic furniture before and I think “crap” is probably a much better word to describe this piece. I would rate it at a 3 or 4 at most. Interestingly George’s piece a was not much more expensive then the other one – maybe ten to 15 percent. Which piece would you (or your customers) rather have in their collection?

For more on this topic see our previous posts on this topic:

• Determining quality in antique furniture (What is Quality?)

• Do you know what you are selling? Because your customer might not.

• Low Cost vs. Low Quality? You get what you pay for
  

This content comes from The specialists guide to Chinese antiques located at http://www.antique-chinese-furniture.com/blog/ For more articles please visit The specialists guide to Chinese antiques - A unique insiders peek at the world of Chinese antiques & reproductions, Asian culture, exotic decor and oriental-inspired design from the far east.

Related posts:

2. Determining quality in antique furniture (What is Quality?)
4. Low Cost vs. Low Quality?
6. Differences in quality between Ningbo/Shanghai/Beijing factories

Chinoiserie screens are always a favorite with interior designers and today, we give you a detailed glimpse into the workshop of an artist craftsmen and let you see the many steps required to create a perfect lacquer painting.

Note: The large versions of these photos are online: http://www.flickr.com/photos/acf-china/2243528705/

The art of lacquer painting is a ancient one, originating in China thousands of  years ago.  In the Neolithic age (about 7,000 years ago), while cutting down trees, the precursors to Chinese people realized that the sap of the lacquer trees could be applied to walls, furniture and other objects, thus giving birth to primitive lacquer art. Painting with lacquer is a meticulous and time-consuming process which most people fail to realize or appreciate. It is a very meticulous labor of love to create a lacquer painting and the process can take at least several weeks or in the case of a series of panels, more then several months to complete. Lacquer paintings & screen panels are traditionally created in three styles which correlate to the color of the paintings background:

1. Gold leaf
2. Deep black
3. Vermilion.

There are other exceptions such as silver background but these are less uncommon.

Step one: Preparing the surface.

1. Like an artist preparing a canvas, the process is very similar only in this case the  painting is done on wood. Normally solid wood is NOT the best choice for these and most vendors will use “plywood” which is less likely to expand or contract (any cracks would ruin the painting). First, a piece of wood is prepared by sanding.
2. The board is covered with a piece of fine white muslin cloth which is glue down on the board. This fabric serves a duel purpose in that should the wood crack or expand the cloth wrapped around it will remain relatively stable (and thus the fragile lacquer will not crack or become damaged).
3. Then the cloth is brushed a layer of “nizi” – a kind of Gesso or base adhesive and is then left for the adhesive to air dry for a short period of time.
4. This covering of adhesive is then sanded smooth to eliminate any bumps or ridges.
5. This entire process is then repeated so that there is at least several coats of sanded “nizi.

Step two: Preparing the black base surface.

1. next step brushed a coat of a specially prepared binding agent made from red lacquer flakes which are dissolved in thinner. This binding agent helps the next coat of black lacquer to soak into the cloth below.
2. After a thin coat its left to air dry for a short period of time.
3. Then brushed on top with a coat of black lacquer at least two times and left to dry completely – normally about three days depending on the weather and humidity.

Step three: Laying down the gold leaf.

1. Extremely thin square sheets of gold-leaf tissue (or im some cases silver) placed over-top of the black lacquer and affixed with glue. Generally the final painting will occur over TOP of the gold leaf. This is what creates the vivid yet subtle color effect you can see on the end painting.
2. If desired, these thin sheets of gold leaf can be wrinkled slightly when they are applied which achieves an aged effect small bits of the black underneath will then show through when it is sanded one last time with a sheet of extra fine sandpaper.
3. This is again left to air dry for a short period of time.

Step 4: Tracing out the design.

1. First, a traditional design is selected often from a painting or book.
2. Then a sheet of white tracing paper with a pattern with small holes (basically these are the tracing lines) in the paper is tacked/taped onto the panel.
3. A special fine talcum like powder is evenly sprinkled over the tracing paper which then sifts through the holes in the tracing paper onto the surface underneath.
4. When the tracing paper, is then removed the patterns remain on the panel seen as a series of fine dotted outlines.

Step 5: The painting

1. Now we start painting. The painter uses white lacquer to rough out the outlines of the forms in the painting.
2. The colors are applied one by one, layer upon layer until the tones are built up.
3. After the painting has dried, the artist will brush over it with a clear coat of lacquer . This process leaves a brilliant surface on a painting and also adds additional protection.

Finished! The end result is a beautiful work of art!

If you want to learn more check out this article on Chinese Mosaic Lacquer Paintings

This content comes from The specialists guide to Chinese antiques located at http://www.antique-chinese-furniture.com/blog/ For more articles please visit The specialists guide to Chinese antiques - A unique insiders peek at the world of Chinese antiques & reproductions, Asian culture, exotic decor and oriental-inspired design from the far east.

Related posts:

2. Making of Chinese Tang Tri-color Pottery
4. Chinese Cracked Lacquer Finish
6. Another cracked laquer effect

This content comes from The specialists guide to Chinese antiques located at http://www.antique-chinese-furniture.com/blog/ For more articles please visit The specialists guide to Chinese antiques - A unique insiders peek at the world of Chinese antiques & reproductions, Asian culture, exotic decor and oriental-inspired design from the far east.

No related posts.