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 / 39.15750°N 77.84361°W / 39.15750; -77.84361

The China Folk House Retreat is a Chinese folk house outside Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, United States. Erected in 1989 in China's Yunnan province, the house was dismantled in 2017, shipped to the United States, and reassembled in West Virginia in 2019. It is maintained by a non-profit organization that aims to improve U.S. understanding of Chinese culture.[1][2]

History

In 2012, John Flower, director of the Chinese studies program at Sidwell Friends School, and his wife Pamela Leonard started bringing students to the southwestern province of Yunnan province as part of a China fieldwork program.[1] Each spring, they brought dozens of 11th- and 12th-grade students to experience Yunnan's cultural and natural environment.[1]

In 2014, Flower, Leonard, and their students visited a small village named Cizhong (Chinese: 茨 中) in the province's Jianchuan County.[3] Located in eastern Himalaya, alongside the Mekong River, the village has a long history of Sino-foreign cultural exchanges. Its Catholic church was established in 1867 by the Paris Foreign Missions Society.[4][5]

In the village, they met Zhang Jianhua, who invited them to his house, a 1989 dwelling built with traditional methods in a blend of traditional styles: Han, Bai, Naxi and Tibetan.[2] Zhang told them that the house would be flooded by a new hydroelectric power station and that the Chinese government had built a new house for him one kilometer away.

After Flower and his students visited Zhang several times, Flower came up with the idea of buying the house, dismantling it, and rebuilding it in the United States.[2]

In 2017, after weeks of measurements and photographing, the whole house was dismantled, a process made easier by its mortise and tenon structure.[3] The disassembled house was sent to Tianjin, shipped to Baltimore, and finally moved to West Virginia's Friends Wilderness Center in Harpers Ferry.

Following the traditional Chinese method of building, Flower and Leonard and various helpers reassembled the house by 2019. Flower and Leonard formed the China Folk House Retreat, a non-profit to develop the project.[2] Leonard serves as CEO.[6]

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

In November 2, 2022, Kunming University of Science and Technology, the Linden Centre 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 vowed to donate a batch of tiles to the project for the reconstruction.[7]

References

  1. 1 2 3 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. 1 2 3 4 Zhao, Huanxin (November 3, 2022). "'Crazy' idea highlights Chinese culture". China Daily. Retrieved November 4, 2022.
  3. 1 2 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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