Our own Jiaojiehe House:

• Home page

• From the west

• From the north-west

• From the south-east

• Interior shell

• Breakfast room

• Master bedroom

• Wooden heart

• More of the interior

• The garden
  (updated 6th Sep 2009)

• The original house

• Adding the personal touch

Jiaojiehe environs:

• Jiaojiehe valley and the Great Wall

• More local views

• Winter to summer 2006

• Dream Village House
  (updated 6th Sep 2009)

• The Phoenix
  (updated 6th Sep 2009)

• Paradise Lost
  (10th Sep 2007)

• Money talks (2007)
  (30th Nov 2007)

• Beauty and the Beast
  (26th Oct 2007)

• Blot on the Landscape (updated 30th May 2009)

• Money talks (2008)
  (20th Nov 2008)

• Jiaojiehe Awards 2009
  (30th May 2009)

• Private Great Wall Hike
  (9th Aug 2009)

It is a cliche to say that China is changing rapidly, the same is true for Jiaojiehe. The following pictures show what a magnificent job they have done so far in modernising the village. The process continues unabated.

Just in case you were tempted to drive past, these days we now have a beautiful big sign at the turn off to remind you of our 8 guest houses.

This wonderful house is the first you see as you drive into the village, we have dubbed it 'the railway station' as it was obviously inspired by one.

We have a fantastic new public toilet and also bath house. At long last, after it had been there for over a year, the latter opened its doors, but not at the weekends as the visitors to the valley left too much of a mess. The area behind makes a wonderful trap for autumn leaves which end up naturally being used in our garden.

This is another new house (next door to us) that we don't own. It is twice the size of ours and is on a plot of land half the size. We particularly admire the Greco-Roman column feature, so appropriate for a rural Chinese setting. Click here to see how it turned out.

The roof tiles are in Chinese temple style, a very nice touch as only dead spirits would live inside such a building, the contractor proudly told us that the roof weighed 6.5 tonnes. .

Now if only we had thought of it 3 years ago we could have covered our garden with concrete too like the rest of the village. "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot"...

As it is these days, we keep the front gate closed and to quote Voltaire's Candide "Il faut cultiver notre jardin". Trust a fool to get it right as usual. But maybe not Chinese ones as the pictures above show.

The morning glory is still the same as before:

Come the evening, we can all relax and have dinner on the terrace, which we have to share with our mouse insurance policy.