The New Story of an Old House

By Eric J.Weiland[US]

The New Story of an Old House

By Eric J.Weiland[US]

L aojia in Chinese means“native place”or“home town”and plays an important role for many Chinese living in such a large country.

Laojia was founded by Eric(left)and Maarten (right),two curious foreigners living in China who were in search of“authenticity”in rapidly developing China.Inspired by the beauty and authenticity that rural China had to offer in terms of heritage,nature, food and people,they decided to move to the countryside,to give this old house a new life.

Our House

The house was built sometime in the late Qing Dynasty,we guess between 1800-1850,although neither the local elders nor the local government seems sure of the age. Much of the true history is lost within the stories of those passed.

It was the residence of a landowner.Actually,our house is one of a set of houses in which the landlord and his offspring lived. Traditionally,a landowner would have a separate home for each of his wives,and each of his families of offspring.Our current landlord’s family name,along with many others in the village,is Lu卢,as they are descendants of the landowner.

Maarten and Eric

In late 2012,Maarten heard about Langshi Village and its beautiful location while traveling in the area with a friend and local tour guide from Guilin,named Mike.Upon visiting Langshi,Maarten fell in love with the old houses and asked Mike to help him speak with the locals about their history.

Soon thereafter they became aware that the owners of this house were interested in putting it up for rent.They were underway with the construction of a new house,and intended to rent out their old house in order to fund the remaining construction work on the new one.

When Maarten heard this news, he dreamt of a new life in this old house,and the Laojia vision was born.Conceptualized as a peaceful and stimulating retreat where artists and thinkers could take refuge, Maarten was sure he was onto something meaningful.

Maarten and I(Eric)had met only a few weeks before;both had spent the year 2012 circumnavigating the blossoming internet startup and environmental sustainability circles in Shanghai.Both of us were in search of new beginnings,and once Maarten painted his Laojia vision at a cafe one afternoon,we had our minds and souls set on exploring the idea.A few days later we were on a train headed to Guilin.

Over the course of a month,we had scaled the mountains behind the village in the cold winter rain,sat in the freezing living rooms of village homes while awkwardly(but happily)navigating through introductions over tea and peanuts with villagers, and probed as deep as we could to find out whether it would be possible to make an old house in the village into a place to call our home.

Slowly we got to know the landlord of this house and his family,all of whom were still living there—wife,son,daughter-in-law,and granddaughter.The granddaughter, named Feiyan,quickly grew fond of Maarten,and this helped greatly to ease the ambiguous future of our relationship.It was certain that the family wanted to rent their house; just not certain exactly when(waiting for a pig to give birth became part of the final lease commencement negotiation),for how long of a lease term,or at what cost.

To help smoothen the negotiation of these uncertain points,we were instructed by Mike—the friend of Maarten’s from Guilin who had essentially become our translator-negotiator-cultural ambassador extraordinaire—that we needed to arrange a series of spectacular feasts with the landlord and his family,as well as some other elders and friends who we would need on their side.Live chickens and fish,roastedduck,wild boar meat,several varieties of tofu,a panoply of vegetables,several bottles of rice whiskey and beer,and a carton of cigarettes were the necessities for an occasion of this kind.

The dinners were events that we will never forget,and they were probably essential to our being able to show the family that we were the kind of generous people who they could be happy to welcome into their house,into their village.We would be the first foreigners to have settled in Langshi,and our presence there would both symbolically and literally accelerate the change that tourism and cultural openness were already bringing at an unyielding pace.

After being on the verge of giving up—at one point we were literally begging Mike to give the stubborn village leader a pleading phone call“just one more time”—the stars aligned and a future for us in Langshi village seemed to be a reality. Before we knew it we were in the great room drinking tea at our signing ceremony with the local official, village leaders,and a host of other seemingly important elderly village characters in attendance.We got a look at the ancient-looking deed to the house,which had been hand printed decades before and been kept hidden away in our landlord’s bedroom.The deal was done and we were given permission to begin renovation in January of 2013.

Renovation

Even though the winter temperatures never reach freezing,the wet climate here makes for a relentlessly penetrating cold environment.As the locals made clear,the only ways to stay warm were either to sit around a charcoal fire or to work. We chose the latter.

By the good graces of having supportive parents,Maarten’s mother(Anne-Marie)and friend (Yoni),and Eric’s dad(Jerry)made the long trip to Langshi village to help during the first weeks of renovation.

Although the house was still gorgeous and structurally in great shape,it was mutually decided that it was not yet in a reasonable state for living.And so we made a deal to stay for a month at a small inn up the river in Yangdi.The daily commute up and down the river on the bamboo boats of locals were frigid but memorable rides,giving us a chance to be reminded(by force)of the natural beauty of the river and mountains—we were tired,cold and out of our elements,but it was impossible not to feel rewarded by the experience and environment that surrounded us.

The leading factor that deemed the house unlivable,especially by a responsible mother as Anne-Marie, was the filthiness of the house.This amounted to the most daunting task of all early on—trying to clean the dirtiest house that any of us had ever encountered.After having made fires inside the house for cooking and warmth,the decades of smoke left a centimeter of black residue on the wood of the entire house.We ended up using small sanding machines to blast the layer of tar and uncover the beauty of the old wood.

Langshi village is near the bank of Li River, named for the spray like riff in front of the village.

Yoni,the good friend of Anne-Marie,is a general contractor and plasterer by trade,an extremely capable maestro who we were extremely lucky to have helping.As most of us stood dumbfounded for the first days,unsure of where to begin having never done such work before,Yoni’s instincts took control.He was out of his element without a doubt—no proper tools, poor quality materials and hardware,inability to speak a word of Mandarin,and no skilled team by his side.But Yoni literally began making the house into a home.

There was no way this work could have been done by us alone, especially after Yoni and co.left us on our own.A platoon of local men, nearly all over the age of 60,most of whom are now our best friends in the village,became our saviors and our faithful renovation team.

There was a learning curve in understanding how to negotiate wages or jobs,how to barter for materials, and how to emphasize the cultural difference in our acceptable level of making things both function and look nice.And our great room even transformed into a smoky gambling den at times,when hired workers from outside the village would square off against locals in a friendly game of cards after a long day’s work.This,while Maarten,myself, and friends camped out,moving from room to room as progress was made.The experience was humbling and undoubtedly allowed for many lessons to be learned by all parties involved.

All materials from wood to bricks to hundreds of bags of sand,refrigerators and washing machines,had to be brought in on our‘bamboo boat’from Yangdi.And these materials didn’t magically arrive at the Yangdi harbor either.Maarten and Eric spent countless days riding public buses,starting from Yangdi, circumnavigating all of Guilin, Yangshuo,many surrounding trade towns,and all while relying on subpar Mandarin skills and(unlike most Chinese)minds not bred for hours on end of tedious bargaining over prices and terms for delivery.

Over the course of six long months plumbing and electrical work were done,entire walls and floors were rebuilt and poured and tiled,beams repaired,doors and windows rediscovered and reinstalled.Wood was oiled and bricks scrubbed and coated.The shower and toilet rooms were built from scratch,a new kitchen was created, and the whole roof was deconstructed,every tile scrubbed and then re-laid anew.

A great many friends passed by and lent their enthusiastic help over that period as well.This surely made the experience more memorable and especially more fun.The house and our project became a spectacle for the locals and domestic tourist passing through the area too;few seemed to understand what on earth would drive two foreigners to rent a broken down house in a poor village in rural Guangxi province.But as the house slowly transformed back into the beautiful place that it had once been constructed to be,the vision became easier to understand.

The house was not yet in the imagined state of our initial dream of a mystical retreat for artists and writers to create masterful work,but something was beginning,and thanks to inspiration from the Airbnb community,there seemed a way for us to welcome an adventurously unique demographic of guests to our place,which would help us begin to return our investment.

As is customary in the village, any time a new house has been built and decorated,there must be a great party to celebrate the new beginning.The locals took us under their wings and treated us to a fantastic show.The local band provided the“music”,the talented men cooked an incredible meal for the more than 80 dinner guests while the women cleaned and served,firecrackers erupted outside of our front door, and the congratulatory toasts continued late into the evening.

On August 1,2013 we hosted our first guest：a charming German man and self-proclaimed“stylish backpacker”named Hans.And Laojia老家was born.(Text and photos courtesy of Eric J Weiland.Find more at www.laojia.co)