TRAVELS WITH QUARRYHOUSE: FUHOU MANSION

Architectural model of the former residence of Zeng Guofan

QuarryHouse recently reminisced about past Global adventures in a pre-Lockdown world. In 2003, a prominent San Francisco architect approached Ed Westbrook with an unusual request to source an abandoned Chinese village, disassemble it, transport the pieces to the US and painstakingly reassemble it as the centerpiece of a Napa Valley vineyard. The client, a modern-day Randolph Hearst, wished to impress his Chinese fiancé. With ChenRagen LLC as QuarryHouse’s established partner in China, Ed was up for the challenge.

He traveled with Wenbiao Chen and Charles Ragen to Heye, Shufangfeng, Hunan Province, where they found the former residence of Zeng Guofan, a brilliant strategist, helped defeat the Taiping Rebellion by establishing a local militia in Hunan instead of relying on the corrupt imperial troops. Other regional leaders followed suit. After his success, Zeng built Fuhou Mansion in 1865. 

Roof detail from the former residence of Zeng Guofan

The estate features a lyrical half-moon pond, which blooms with lotus flowers during the summer. Zeng built the rural compound to withstand the humid, subtropical climate using native rocks, wood, soil, and locally kilned bricks. It survived the Cultural Revolution as a Red Guards barracks. Along with a gatehouse, principal buildings, pavilions, and halls, Zeng, a Confusion scholar, possessed a library with three hundred thousand volumes of various genres, one of the largest private Chinese book collections.

Fretwork panels filter light in one of the buildings

After spending time on the property, the surrounding countryside, and with the Heye people, Ed and his team knew it would be a cultural crime to remove Fuhou Mansion from its home. Instead, they found Hunan artisans who could replicate the structures piece by piece, which QuarryHouse would ship to the site in Napa, where they would reassemble and install it. Unfortunately, by this time, the betrothed couple broke up; Ed still has his story, and in 2006 the former residence of Zeng Guofan became one of China's Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level.