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Our own Jiaojiehe House:
Jiaojiehe environs:
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By September 2009, my modest UK pension had 'shrunk' considerably owing to the decline in the value of the pound sterling and we decided we needed to realise the value of our two smaller houses. We sold them both to a young Beijing couple who appeared sympathetic to our way of doing things in Jiaojiehe, at least they haven't dug up the grass lawns (yet). "Buy one, get one free" is a familiar sign in supermarkets the world over these days, but in this case we got a bonus cottage when we bought our second house.
It may have looked charming but the reality was that it was in dreadful condition - look at the crack in the right side of the wall owing to subsidence. It had to go.... Our original plan was to rebuild in the original style and make it a bit bigger. Two things altered that, firstly we wanted to make the end result available to Yuehong's elderly father Guoliang and secondly, the base had to be raised so that it could be connected to the new village waste water system.
As he did with our original house, Guoliang directed the construction of the external shell and roof:
By December 2006, the house was almost ready to hibernate for the winter, to be completed by Summer 2007. We made the house "winter resistant", such that its energy bills will be minimised.
This is how I shall remember our true 'country cottage', small but perfect in every way, with 'all mod cons'.
We spent a couple of idyllic weeks shacked up here, officially we were here to road test the heating (and more importantly the insulation). Both passed.
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