In West Virginia, US-China personal exchanges find a home, flown in from Yunnan

A teacher brought a farmhouse from the village of Cizhong to the woods of Harpers Ferry, where it hosts talks, meals and retreats

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The China Folk House in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Photo: Bochen Han

Bochen Hanin Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

Published: 2:03am, 30 Aug 2024Updated: 2:46am, 30 Aug 2024

Even for John Flower himself, it was a crazy idea from the start: disassembling and transporting a farmhouse from western Yunnan province and reconstructing it in the United States.

Nearly a decade after Flower, then a high school history teacher, first spotted the house in 2016 on one of his many trips to rural China, the China Folk House stands proudly in the deep woods of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, its reassembly finished but for some roofing, thousands of miles from its original home in the Tibetan Catholic village of Cizhong.

In Cizhong, the house was conventional enough. These days, it hosts talks, meals and retreats for ordinary and prominent folk alike, from American high school students and tourists from mainland China, to renowned environmentalist Dai Qing and Kurt Campbell, the US deputy secretary of state.

Over time, the house has become a small oasis for people-to-people ties amid high-level US-China tensions.

During the pandemic, the house served as a connecting valve for Americans who couldn’t go to China. Today, it serves as a bridge for those still reluctant to go, deterred by the US State Department’s travel advisory for the mainland, which ranks it at level 3: “reconsider travel”.

It’s a feat all the more remarkable in an election year where even interpersonal ties between citizens of the two countries have become politicised, with Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz drawing criticism from Republicans for his time teaching in China.

The very reassembling of the house tells a grass-roots story of bilateral cooperation.