ABOVE IMAGE: Guests in Yin Yu Tang: A Chinese Home, Peabody Essex Museum. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.
I joined the Peabody Essex Museum in March as the Huang Family Curator of Chinese Art and Culture. The job was new, but PEM had already been a personal favorite during my two decades of museum experience. Besides PEM’s holdings of one of the country’s oldest Asian art collections and its diverse exhibitions and dynamic programs, what attracted me to the job was the museum’s beloved Yin Yu Tang — a home from China’s southeastern Huizhou region — and the opportunity to create its new interpretative gallery in the near future.
My fascination for traditional Chinese houses goes back to my childhood in China, when rapid urbanization meant I did not have access to life in either Beijing courtyards in the North, where my maternal grandfather was born, or tile-roofed houses in the southern province of Zhejiang (somewhat similar to Yin Yu Tang), where my paternal grandfather grew up. I would not only hear stories of the hometowns, but also observe the distinctive lifestyles of my two grandfathers, which I believed to have been significantly influenced by their respective living conditions in their formative years. I would marvel at how residential environments shape human behaviors.
Meanwhile, it was back in the days when postal mail and stamp collecting were still commonplace. One set of stamps featuring different Chinese dwellings was published in the late 1980s and widely circulated and collected in the 1990s. For me, it opened a whole new world of vernacular architectural types. Despite the great variety, Huizhou residences with their high, white, “horse-head” walls stood out as one of the most impressive. Take a close look at this set. Can you identify which stamp represents the Huizhou architectural style and looks like the facade of Yin Yu Tang?
I arrived at PEM in the spring, just in time to participate in the climactic events that marked the end of the year-long celebration of the 20th anniversary of Yin Yu Tang’s opening in Salem in 2003. I was time and again amazed and invigorated by our visitors’ enthusiasm for this one-of-a-kind example of Chinese vernacular architecture in its entirety in the U.S and their interest in Chinese art and culture at large.
In May, when we welcomed back the world’s premier pipa virtuoso, Wu Man, she played her plucked string instrument, also known as the Chinese lute, to a full house. Some audience members had seen her 20 years ago when she first played at PEM with the Silkroad Ensemble, the international musical collective conceived by world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma. There were also new audience members — adults or children, musicians or not, Chinese and from many other cultures — who came together to celebrate the occasion that culminated in Wu Man’s captivating performance.
At its founding, the Silkroad Ensemble defined itself as “a reminder that even as rapid globalization resulted in division, it brought extraordinary possibilities for working together.” This message appears to be all the more salient today as we experience increasing geopolitical tension and political tribalism. It is also in perfect accord with Yin Yu Tang’s mission after it traveled all the way across the Pacific from a rural Chinese village to an early American port city that has been thinking globally for centuries. As the curator in charge of Yin Yu Tang’s forthcoming interpretative gallery, I feel a great excitement and responsibility to tell its multifaceted stories, inspire curiosity and empathy, encourage people to see beyond differences and help build connections.
Huizhou regional architecture’s timber and masonry structure, internal “skywell” courtyards and decorative elements are all interesting to learn about. I envision a new gallery that will allow visitors to explore Yin Yu Tang’s many architectural and symbolic features. Yet, this home is more than a 200-year-old, wood-and-brick house. From its completion around 1800 to its last habitation in 1982, it was home to eight generations of the Huang family. They lived through China’s last imperial dynasty, the modern Republican period and the new Communist era. The name Yin Yu Tang, meaning “Hall of Plentiful Shelter,” suggests it was built with the beautiful, and fortunately fulfilled, wish for its future residents, the family’s descendants, to be continuously protected and blessed.
Besides Yin Yu Tang itself, we are very lucky to have preserved and collected many furnishings, everyday items, photographs, written records and artworks, which are original to the building and the Huang family or have been found in the region. With their aid, Yin Yu Tang has the true potential to feel like a home rather than simply a house, appreciated by heart as well as mind.
For the past several months, I have been viewing, studying and selecting these objects and materials for the interpretative gallery. Gradually, the Huang family has become more than just one of the countless names I encounter in history books. Now, they feel like individuals, with a lively presence and vivid personalities. When I travelled to Shanghai to meet with the living generations of the Huang family in November, we felt a natural connection right away. Perhaps it was because I had already gotten to know their ancestors through the photos they took, the account books they kept, the letters they sent home, the drawings they made and the poetry they composed!
From right to left: Huang Zizhi; his mother, Madame Cheng; his wife, Hong Zhaodi; and in front Huang Zhenzhi, son of Huang Zizhi’s older brother, Huangcun, ca. 1912.
Huang Zizhi, seated, and his son Huang Zhenxin, Wuchang, February 28, 1934.
Hong Zhaodi, seated, with her son Huang Zhenxin and daughter-in-law Chou Lijuan, and their two children, Huang Binggen and Huang Yanjun, Shanghai, ca. 1950.
Huang Binggen, on the right, and his daughter, Huang Jue, at the Peabody Essex Museum with museum staff, 2004.
From right to left: Huang Jue; Yao Wu; Huang Jue’s mother, Li Wenying; and Huang Jue’s son Huang Chengman, Shanghai, 2024.
While in China, I was also able to spend a substantial amount of time traveling and researching in Huangcun, the village where Yin Yu Tang was originally located, and other villages, towns and counties in the Huizhou region. Yin Yu Tang is a household name in Huangcun: Its relocation to PEM was the beginning of a series of international exchange projects that brought the village onto the global stage. Local residents, including several elderly men who lived or played at Yin Yu Tang in their youth, kindly walked me around Huangcun and shared their memories and stories of the village and the house. With their accounts, I will be in a better position to contextualize Yin Yu Tang in future exhibitions.
On this trip, I visited a good number of historic houses, varying in scale and spanning the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. It was especially exciting to see numerous houses similar to Yin Yu Tang, either in their structural layout or ornamentation. For example, the Zhu Ren Residence was built in Xiuning county, just like Yin Yu Tang, and dates from roughly the same time period. The dragon motif of its lattice windows bears a strong resemblance to the decorative pattern of Yin Yu Tang’s wooden window carvings. It is quite possible that the carpenters were from related workshops or shared the same lineage.
Some of the old houses are still inhabited by members of the families that have resided there for generations. However, the current residents I spoke with were all elders whose children have moved away to bigger cities for better job opportunities. Perhaps some of these younger people might eventually move back to their hometowns in retirement, as historical Huizhou merchants did for centuries in the past. But for the time being, their elderly parents are most concerned with the upkeep of their homes and the preservation of family heritage.
Thankfully, more and more meaningful old houses have been recognized as “key cultural relics protection units,” and therefore could receive official resources to supplement the families’ limited means to care for them. In places like Guchengyan and Qiankou, uninhabited residential buildings together with other types of architecture such as ancestral halls and memorial archways are relocated in clusters to form museum campuses or historical cultural zones. While the disappearance of traditional dwellings in the face of modernization is regrettably almost inevitable, it is reassuring to see these growing endeavors. I hope Yin Yu Tang, now in its location in Salem, continues to be a part of worldwide efforts to raise awareness and foster appreciation for Huizhou architecture and culture.
I am deeply grateful to Huizhou residents Zhang Jianping and his wife Guo Sizhen for their great assistance during my research trip.
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