Sweet home Jiuxian

Nicknamed 'Crazy Ian' by the locals, South African Ian Hamlinton has become something of a reluctant celebrity in China for his one-man building renovation in a southern village

In much of China, there is a tendency to tear down old dilapidated buildings and replace them with something modern. But in Jiuxian, a village in the county of Yangshuo, in southern China, locals ponder over old structures that have been renovated and made both beautiful and usable again.

This is the work of 40-year-old South African architect Ian Hamlinton, who has lived in the village for four years and plans to stay permanently.

Hamlinton rented a 200-year-old house on a mountain slope that was overgrown with trees and grass and had a collapsed roof, in 2009. It took him two years to renovate the place, ending up with a beautiful two-story building with a gallery on the first floor.

In the hallway he planted a tree as a reminder of the property's former condition and used old bricks and tiles from the original building.

Working alone on the project, local people nicknamed him "Crazy Ian", although they later saw the worth of his hard work.

Hamlinton is a well-traveled man who has worked in South Africa, Egypt, Jordan, India, Nepal, Thailand and China.

He says he fell in love with the Yangshuo area the moment he arrived there and later sold his car and houses in South Africa to settle down in China.

But he was less impressed by some of China's new architecture, which he views as both ugly and impractical compared to older buildings.

"It is cool in summer and warm in winter to live in the old buildings. It is the opposite in the new ones," he says.

"In China, people compare their own building with each other's and all the buildings look the same, and they spend a lot of money to decorate the inside of the room with industrial products.

"I like things very simple and I don't add things to make beauty. The mud wall and the wood are natural things that make people comfortable."

Hamlinton innovated with what he had during the renovation project. In the grounds of the building he uncovered dozens of pieces of porcelain, some dating back to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and others from the 1960s and 1970s, marked with quotations from Mao Zedong, which he embedded into an outside wall of the house.

Before starting work Hamlinton visited the town and county governments to ask permission for his project. He was surprised at how easily they approved his plans, but that wasn't the end of his dealings with the authorities. Government officials came later to inspect his building and found problems with it. And villagers also had issues with his work, according to Zhang Weifei, Hamlinton's business partner in the hotel they have now opened in the village.

According to Zhang, Hamlinton "drank it through," and the disagreements were solved.

On completing the renovation, Hamlinton turned his eye to four other dilapidated buildings in the village, which, along with Zhang, he turned into a hotel, which they named Secret Garden.

Four years after his arrival, Hamlinton has become something of a local celebrity in Jiuxian and his notoriety has brought him many female admirers.

"He is famous around here," says Zhang. "He does not lack pursuers. We did not understand why a hardworking man like him made up his mind to remain single at first. Gradually, we see he enjoys his life working on the buildings, gardens and mountains."

Hamlinton says he wants a "free life."

"All of my Chinese pals are married and they complain to me about their lives when they are drunk," he says.

Secret Garden now employs 11 villagers, with Zhang operating the business and Hamlinton in charge of the buildings.

He has built sewer lines for them, which run to rice paddies at the foot of a mountain, over gravel paths and through aquatic flower and grasses, intended to clean the waste water before it reaches the farmland.

While he follows Chinese fengshui inside the buildings, outside the garden is very natural, unlike the formality of traditional Chinese gardens.

"I like using my own hands to make things, but not money," he says.

While Hamlinton is seen as a character in the village, he has also been accepted as one of the locals.

Kang Niansheng, a driver for the hotel, in his 30s, says: "He is indeed a little different from the other foreigners. He is crazy. Few foreigners treat Yangshuo as their home. But he is. He drinks, quarrels and works with us. He is no different from the other villagers."

And Tang Xiaozhen, a waitress in her 20s, says: "Crazy Ian has never stopped adapting to Chinese culture with an open mind, just like he has never stopped rebuilding the old houses. He always wears a smile on his face."

For Hamlinton, he doesn't see what all the fuss is about.

"What I did is quite normal in my country," he says.

"I don't understand why the media come to me every week and ask me again and again what my dream is since last year."

Long Yanxiu contributed to this story

liyang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 09/13/2013 page28)