This Old Ramshackle House – The Weird Side of the Internet

This Old Ramshackle House – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

Let me paint for you a picture of childhood imagination. If you grew up anywhere near an industrial area, you might, and I stress “might,” have a fond vision of towering, anarchy-laden construction. Ramshackle, like the tree fort you might build in the local woods. It’s because industrial areas have a lot of industrial junk and not much concern about the kids making forts out of it all. Well, that was the eighties. These days, with the whole “helicopter parent” thing, probably no kinds are playing in the junk piles. But in a village in southwest China, 42 year-old Chen Tianming is the kind of building with junk.

Chen was an ordinary guy living with his family in a bungalow when developers came around, offering to buy up his- and his neighbor’s properties to put in a resort. Everybody took the cash except Chen, and as consequence, every house was demolished except Chen’s. And that’s when he started building… vertically.

Somewhere in southwest China, there is a concoction of wood plank and tentpoles, baling twine and stripped screws, and a devil-may-care position on local ordinances and building code. Currently, he’s having morning tea in a ten-story monument to human pluck.

The crazy thing here is that the resort went bust, and they just walked away and left Chen surrounded by the rubble of his former village, giving Chen endless building materials. This is really good, because he’s spent tens of thousands of yuan in court.

One final cool thing. Now that people in China are aware of Chen’s life’s work, it’s become an attraction. Not saying people go inside. I don’t blame them. A lot of people think it’s reminiscent of the work of artisy Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli, in particular the chaotic building of masterpieces “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “Spirited Away”.

More from Liam Sweeny…