Vogue 2003-04

Culture Club

An American resident in Beijing has restored one of the city's beautiful but rapidly disappearing traditional courtyard homes and transformed it into a fashionable boutique hotel. Unique pieces from the early Chinese Communist era fill the interiors.

In Beijing's hutong, history is a relative term. These traditional neighbourhoods of labyrinthine lanes flanked by single-story courtyard houses form the skeleton of old Beijing. But it's a skeleton that's crumbling as the hutong disappear, razed to make way for new developments on valuable inner-city land.

There's been more destruction of heritage architecture in the past 10 years of development than in the decade of the Cultural Revolution,” says Laurence Brahm, an expatriate American who's lived in China on and off for more than two decades.

A desire to preserve this vanishing history set Brahm former lawer, entrepreneur, artist and author of more than 20 books on China in his path to restoring a number of courtyard houses. I was living in a courtyard from 1990 and fell in love with the architecture.” The traditional design of courtyard houses hardly changed from the Han dynasty (206BC-220AD). Harmony and order were the key, so the layout was almost symmetrical. A typical house had an inner and outer courtyard, with living and sleeping quarters, separated by a reception hall. The magic of Beijing is the courtyarda sanctuary of peace, of symmetry or order," says Brahm. It's the expression of the Chinese socio-psychology."

Brahm's project resulted in the Red Capital Club, a restaurant and bar in Beijing's heritage Dongsi area, and the Red Capital Residence a few lanes away. The Residence is a boutique guesthouse with modern hotel staples such as the Internet and cable television. There are five suites: the Chairman's Suite, Brahm's re-creation of the way Chairman Mao lived; two Author's suites, dedicated to Chinese author Han Suyin and American journalist Edgar Snow; and two Concubines' suites. Quirky touches include female staff in Red Guards' uniforms and goldfish in bowls in the Author's suites. We don't want guests to be lonely,” jokes Brahm.

Mao chic” is how Brahm describes the door of the courtyard houses, a look devoted to the Communist Party, the early days of the People's Republic and the Cultural Revolution. Restoration has preserved original architectural features, such as tiles from the 1911-1941 Republican period. Furniture in the Residence ranges from antique carved wooden beds to a chair procured from the Central Government Meeting Room. The red telephones in the hotel rooms would, in the 1960s, have been found only in offices of state leaders. In the Chairman's Divan (the cigar lounge), four chairs were obtained from the Central Government Office were used in the 1950s for discussions among military leaders.

Many pieces were gifts, while others were purchased and restored. They were originally for Grahm's home – the first of the three courtyard houses he restore – but were later moved to the Club and Residence. There were surprises too. When crafsmen were restoring a caved wooden bed, now in a Concubine Suite, they realised it was teak. As teak was used only up to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), it meant the bed was much older than first thought.

Cultural Revolution-era statuary features in every room. During that period, the Red Guards took over China's kilns to produce millions of statuettes of a benevolent Mao and his happy workers.

The Red Capital is a word-of-mouth success. You'd never go there unless you knew someone who had been there,” says Brahm. The Residence welcomes more and more return guests, while the Club is equally popular with well0heeled Chinese, expat residents and foreigners in the know.

Sally Webb

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