In 2002, it was decided to build a dam near the city of Fuzhou in southeastern China, in the province of Jiangxi. In the flooded zone, there were fifty villas built 400-500 years ago, as well as a forest of 10 thousand camphor trees, which included specimens unique in age and size, for example, a 1500-year-old weighing 80 tons. A native of these places, a prominent Shanghai businessman Ma Dagong found out about these plans of the authorities when he came to visit his relatives, and immediately decided to save the situation. As a result, he bought a plot of 40 hectares on the outskirts of Shanghai, in the “city” of Matsiao in the Minhang district - 700 kilometers from Fujchou, and moved villas and trees there.
To do this, the villas of the Ming and Qing dynasties had to be carefully divided into millions of numbered components. However, multi-ton trees presented a more serious problem. To transport them through the streets of Fuzhou, ten overpasses had to be rebuilt there and many streets deepened so that trucks could pass there. As a result of this project, ten trucks were hopelessly broken, and only eight out of ten thousand trees made it to the site and took root, but this can still be called a great success - given the alternative.
The "prototype", the first villa Ma Dagong reassembled from 100,000 parts in 2005, in the same years planted in the same position relative to the cardinal points as in Fuzhou, the trees gave new shoots. Kommersant wanted to open a museum or "artist's village" in the resulting ensemble, however, having learned in the late 2000s that the Aman hotel group and the Australian architect Kerry Hill hired by it were planning a resort hotel in Shanghai, and decided to enter into negotiations with them. Aman Resorts, which mainly owns hotels in East and South Asia, was founded in the 1980s, since 2013 its owner is Vyacheslav Doronin.
In 2011, Ma Dagong sold a plot with a forest and a first villa to this company, as well as 49 other houses - disassembled. The result is the Amanyangyun resort hotel: 13 villas were "assembled" for it, each containing four rooms. Modern buildings were also built. The interiors of historic buildings are furnished with modern, mostly wooden furniture.
The plans are to collect all the historical villas saved by Ma Dagong on the territory, then sell half of them for amounts of $ 15 million, and build various infrastructure facilities, including an underground art gallery.
In preparing this article, materials from the magazine Der Spiegel were used.
