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China Folk House Retreat in Harpers Ferry
China Folk House Retreat in Harpers Ferry
By Mickey Rathbun
When John Flower and his wife, Pam Leonard, scholars of Chinese history and culture, took a group of high school students for a semester of study in the Chinese province of Yunnan back in 2016, they hardly imagined they’d be bringing an entire farmhouse home with them.
Though the move took a year to complete, the decision to make it happen was nearly instantaneous.
The China Folk House Retreat project started when Pam and John, who teaches at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., visited a small village in the Himalayas, near the Tibetan city of Shangri-la, that was going to be destroyed to build a dam.
The village is in the Three Parallel Rivers area, a UNESCO World Heritage site. As the couple passed one of the houses slated for destruction, a man stepped out and invited them in for tea. “I said to him, ‘It’s a shame your house is going to be flooded. I wish I could take it home with me,’” recalled John. “And he said, basically, ‘Okay, let’s go for it.’”
John got a grant from Sidwell Friends to do a preliminary study. Built in 1989, the house displayed the impeccable craftsmanship of rural Yunnan architecture. John said he was drawn to the house because it was “just the house of an every day person.” Mr. Zhang Jianhua, owner of the house, was also eager to share renowned folkways with the wider world.
Over five days in the summer of 2017—the height of the rainy season—the house was dismantled and packed up by a small team of workers led by four carpenters of the same Bai ethnic group that had built the house. The crew worked 12-14 hour days, walking two miles in and out every day. “It was a fevered process,” said John.
The pieces of the house were carefully wrapped and loaded into a container that was shipped to the U.S. and stored while John and Pam scouted out a location. They eventually sited the house in Harpers Ferry at the Friends Wilderness Center, a Quaker preserve that is part of the 1,400-acre Rolling Ridge conservancy just across the border in West Virginia. The FWC board was very enthusiastic about the project, which fit perfectly with the group’s mandate to encourage people to come out and enjoy nature.
The first people to offer support for the CFHR were parents of students who had traveled to China with John and Pam. Kurt Campbell, the National Security Council coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, was the first board chair. was the one who really led it through,” said Pam. “He totally made it happen.”
Over the past six years, the house has been painstakingly reassembled, mainly by volunteers, including the West Virginia Timber Framers Guild, who stepped into the breach when visas were denied to a group of Chinese craftsmen who had planned to come help rebuild the house.
“Their only request was that we not give up on helping their brothers from Yunnan come over,” said John. “I’m not gonna give up because that’s the promise I made.”
A new set of stairs recently has been added, modeled on the original staircase and built by Martin Fair, a Purcellville guitar maker who has worked on the project from the beginning.
“In Chinese homes the stairs are always added last,” said Pam, “after the carpenter receives his pay. It’s like the keys to the house.”
To support the project, the people of Yunnan provided traditional rounded roof tiles to replace the temporary metal roof. Not only will the tile roof enhance the house aesthetically, said John, it will provide important structural stability by holding everything in place. Fundraising is underway for the roof installation.
John and Pam envision the CFHR as a center focused on cultural exchange, experiential education, community engagement, and environmental stewardship.
“As a living museum, the house will show that traditional life in Yunnan has lots of similarities to traditional life in Appalachia,” said John, who is determined to share these opportunities broadly. “Regular everyday people have a lot to contribute. There’s tremendous local knowledge on both sides.”
Many CFHR programs are for young people who, he added, “Will need tools to navigate the mess they’re going to inherit.”
John and Pam continue to be astonished by the generosity of the FWC and the many volunteers who have helped them.
“We are tremendously grateful to all these people who came out and believed in this crazy idea,” said John. “When we build it, they will come.”
