Yin Yu Tang House

 Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday. Fair warning-my post is a little bit long today.

I still have a few photos  from my visit 2 weeks ago to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts that are worth sharing. Today I thought I would take you through an actual Chinese house that is at this museum.

The Yin Yu Tang House is from the southeastern part of China in the  Huizhou region. I had to look that up on a map. It's the darker orange part.

 This house was built by a prosperous merchant by the name of Huang and was where  his family lived for over 200 years. It was taken apart and brought to Salem in 1982 where it was reassembled. 

If you leave the museum and walk around the back of it, you see this view of the house. One thing that's interesting to notice is that there  are no windows.

To visit the house, you have to be inside the museum. When you go into the house you first enter this courtyard area. As I just mentioned, this house does not have windows, and the only natural light coming in is from above this courtyard. If you look at the top of the photo you can see some glass panels. These were added by the museum to protect the structure from rain and snow, but in China that part of the building would have been open to the environment. It would be  how light would enter the building.

The rooms are on both the left and right sides of this courtyard with stairs at either end. There are also 2 water sources here, both for home's occupants to use and  as a protection in case of fire.

The person who looks like they are on their phone in the forefront of my photo is actually listening to the device they lend you to self-tour the house.

Many of the rooms off of the courtyard were bedrooms. Next is a photo of one bedroom on the first floor. This huge bed took up much of the room.  It was a place of honor to have your bedroom on this level.

There was also a little storage alcove on the first floor too. I liked this bicycle and all the texture on the walls and floor.

 This next photo is the kitchen. It's not anything  I'd think of as a kitchen, maybe more of a dining room. The actual cooking would have taken place out in the open courtyard because this family did not own modern stoves. I'm actually curious how they would have cooked. I am sure it would have  been in a wok, but did they cook over a fire? I know during the cultural revolution Mao outlawed cooking at home, so perhaps that  is why there was no sign of a place to cook.

This house also had no heat. I never photographed them, but there were lots of small handheld pans where hot coals would be added. You could carry that heat around with you. I'm not familiar with the environment in this part of China, so maybe it was not a particulary cold area.

I showed you the next 2 photos previously, and I thought I'd include them again. Everyone was required to hang a picture of Mao during the cultural revolution. That's creepy and sad if you ask me, but it is history.

Here's another bed and then just a wall with some interesting texture.

And below is a high chair. This was in a storage room. The box behind this high chair was actually a coffin. I'm not sure whose it was or why it was there, but perhaps it was ready for when the family elder passed.

The family and this house were around during the time of Chairman Mao and his cultural revolution. Here's another photo they were required to hang. 

Mao looks so friendly, but if you're familiar with what he did during the Cultural Revolution, it was not a very friendly time.

This next photo is up on the second floor, looking across the courtyard.

And then looking down into the courtyard.

This is the walkway along one side of the second floor. The walkway went around the whole of the second floor. The rooms in this photo were to the left of this walkway, and the courtyard is on the right.

These stairs look a little bit steep to me. 

Looking down into the courtyard you can see the 2 water/well features.

Here's a few more "random" views from inside the rooms.

This next bedroom was wallpapered, and  it was a wedding gift when the eldest son married. 

It's interesting to think about the number of people who lived in this house at various times. Often there were 3 or even 4 generations living here. However the men, who were merchants, were gone for long periods of time to their offices down along the coast, probably near or in Hong Kong.

These next photos are from an upstairs storage area, but I liked them so I'll share.

And finally, here is one of the water features. They would have contained large goldfish (koi), although the ones here are tiny. Those water lilies don't look real either.

I hope you enjoyed your tour of the Chinese home. It is definitely a treasure of this museum.