Mao Slept Here
Western executives are fueling an unusual scramble for high-end housing in Beijing
BEIJING -- Westerners have pumped billions into China's economy over the past few years. Now they want a tony address.
The growing presence of executives from abroad in China is fueling an unusual real-estate scramble. In an Asian twist on the pied-à-terre, wealthy and influential foreigners are paying a premium for traditional-style houses here that many Chinese regard as too cramped and too old-fashioned. Known as courtyard houses, they have been razed by the thousands in recent years, and only 3,000 remain in Beijing. Mao Zedong lived in a courtyard and so do many of today's Chinese leaders.
A Piece of History: An American owner restored this traditional Beijing courtyard house.
News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Wendi, who was born in China, were recently involved in negotiations for one of these houses on one of the most exclusive streets in China, a block east of the Forbidden City's moat, though Mr. Murdoch says he has not made a purchase. Brokers say Jerry Yang, founder of Yahoo Inc., and former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President John Thornton are both scouting for courtyards. Mr. Yang and Mr. Thornton didn't respond to requests for comment.
The wealthiest buyers are managing to fit swimming pools, satellite dishes and underground parking into the rigid, centuries-old design of the courtyard house. According to blueprints reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the unfinished home the Murdochs looked at is designed to have a pool in one of two double-level basements, plus a game room with golf and billiards. Unlike traditional courtyards, which are built out of wood so carefully fitted that nails aren't needed, the seven-building compound is concrete. But its layout above ground is traditional, with both an inner and an outer courtyard.
Foreigners are pouring into Chinese megacities like Beijing and Shanghai -- there may be as many as half a million in Shanghai alone. For most Westerners in China, housing now comes down to a choice between a high-rise apartment downtown and an American-style house in a suburban gated community.
For a fortunate few in Beijing, however, the boxy courtyard houses known as siheyuan, or four-sided gardens, have become the ultimate real-estate status symbols. Buying one of these houses, which are miniature versions of Beijing's 14th-century palatial Forbidden City, is an arduous process that can require negotiating with as many as 30 families. Dozens of families were crammed into many of the houses during the Cultural Revolution, and unrelated families may still reside in various rooms of the same house or in makeshift shelters erected in the open courtyard. They are all entitled to compensation for moving out. That can make striking a deal to buy out the residents even harder than finding a property.
But would-be owners see the courtyard house as the epitome of Chinese domestic life, a link to 5,000 years of history that's worth the $1 million or more that French architect Pascale Desvaux says is the minimum price.
Ms. Desvaux and her husband Georges Desvaux, the head of consultancy McKinsey & Co. in China, live with their children in a simple courtyard. It is tucked into temple grounds that were set aside for the family of a Chinese emperor a century ago and later for Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
That history makes Ms. Desvaux reluctant to tinker. Still, she changed the size of some doors and installed a passageway to link her daughters' bedroom to the main house. "This is a total fantasy, not a Chinese way of doing things," she says.
Historically, courtyard houses were located within Beijing's distinctive maze of narrow urban footpaths called hutongs. The courtyards' outer walls are built right along the street, so widening the hutongs means knocking down the houses. Fewer than 50 of these lanes are now protected from development.
14th-Century Style: A new courtyard house, left, with traditional woodwork and painting. An unfinished pied-a-terre, below.
But the Beijing Municipal Government has strict guidelines that make restoration of courtyard houses an expensive proposition. You can't uproot trees, for example, and the size of windows is dictated. So is the kind of paint for the outer walls. And because many of the houses sit in neighborhoods that aren't hooked up to city sewer systems, running pipes for heating and toilets adds to the costs. Nevertheless, most Western buyers have managed to do extensive renovations, adding up-to-date plumbing and triple-paned windows.
When Pulitzer Prize-winning American photographer H.S. Liu first set eyes on a traditional Beijing courtyard house that was up for sale, it took him a mere 30 seconds to decide to buy it. Then he gutted it. "A lot of those rooms were totally worthless," he says. "I had to push it down." He followed convention by painting the outside walls with the requisite pig's blood, but he also put in a sauna and skylights over a stainless-steel kitchen.
"The scariest part was when they built the basement," says Mr. Liu. He worried that the digging might hit one of the tunnels that Chinese leaders are rumored to use to whisk around town. Now he has a movie-screening room. Mr. Liu left untouched the courtyard's 100-year-old pomegranate trees; at garden parties each fall, he mixes their rosy fruit into martinis.
American lawyer Laurence Brahm has lived in China since the 1980s and owns three courtyards, one of them a hotel. He boasts that "aside from the piping, the electricity and the heating, everything else is original." Except, of course, for the bar he put into an underground bomb shelter that was probably once a septic tank.
He says guests at the Red Capital Residence hotel in one of his courtyards -- the "East Concubine Suite" goes for $190 a night -- often ask him for help in wading through bureaucracy so they can buy their own siheyuan. "I just say, 'No. Good luck,' " Mr. Brahm says.
A classic courtyard embodies principles of feng shui. You enter through a red gate that opens onto a solid wall meant to block bad spirits. A zigzag brings a visitor to buildings arranged in a U-shape around the outer courtyard. Blood-red pillars and gray bricks support squat tiled roofs edged with a latticework in bright green, blue and gold, with figures of flowers and birds.
To go from one room to another, you must step out onto the uncovered courtyard, a chilly proposition during the brutal north China winter. But it's also part of the appeal. Says Hong Kong architect Kamwah
四合院的魅力
毛泽东就住在一套这样的房子中，当今的许多中国领导人也是如此。
现在，为了在亚洲拥有一个落脚之地，许多海外成功人士也在高价购买四合院。这在中国引发了一场非同寻常的传统四合院的房地产热，尽管许多当地人都认为这种房子太过拥挤落伍。
在中国近年来的城市化进程中，仅北京就有数千套四合院被夷为平地，目前仅存3,000套四合院。
知情人士透露，新闻集团(News Corp.)的鲁珀特?梅铎(Rupert Murdoch, 又译：鲁珀特?默多克)和出生在中国的妻子邓文迪(Wendi)最近签下协议，将在中国最独特的街道──故宫(Forbidden City)护城河的东边购买一处四合院。梅铎证实今年就一处未完工的房产进行过商谈，但表示还没有购买，并拒绝置评。房地产中介称，雅虎公司(Yahoo Inc.)的创始人杨致远(Jerry Yang)和前高盛(Goldman Sachs Group Inc.)总裁约翰?桑顿(John Thornton)两人也都在寻找四合院。杨致远和桑顿都未对请其发表评论的要求做出回应。
这些最有钱的买家一直在想方设法在僵化的、具有数百年历史的四合院中加入游泳池、卫星电视天线和地下室。根据《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)得到的梅铎已同意购买、但尚未完工的房屋的设计图纸，两个两层地下室中的一个被安排了游泳池，还有一个包含高尔夫球和台球的游戏室。与传统土木结构的四合院不同，这个七间房子组成的四合院是用混凝土建造的。但其地上布局仍是传统的，具有内院和外院。
对生活在中国的大多数西方人而言，在选择房屋时既可考虑市区的高层公寓，也可考虑郊区的美式别墅。
不过，对在北京的少数有钱人而言，四合院已经成为房地产最高地位的象征。购买一套四合院有时需要同多达30户家庭进行艰苦的谈判。在文化大革命期间，许多四合院中挤进了几十户家庭，毫无亲戚关系的家庭甚至住在同一座房子的不同房间内，或是住在院子中临时搭建的棚子中。他们都有权获得搬迁补偿。同这些居民达成补偿协议比找到这样一处房产更加困难。
但有意向的买家将四合院视为中国国内生活的缩影，认为它同中国五千年的历史有著难以割舍的联系。法国建筑师德沃(Pascale Desvaux)说，这最低也值100万美元。
德沃和她的丈夫、麦肯锡公司(McKinsey & Co., Inc.)驻中国负责人戴乔治(Georges Desvaux)以及他们的孩子住在一个小四合院中。它所在的地区上百年前曾供皇族居住，西藏的精神领袖达赖喇嘛也曾在此居住。
这样的历史让德沃不愿进行改动。不过，她还是改变了几个门的尺寸，并建了一个过道，将她女儿居住的厢房同正房连通。她说，这完全是一种奇思妙想，不是中国人的行事方式。
历史上，四合院主要坐落于北京城区狭窄的胡同中。四合院的外墙即沿街而建，因此拓宽胡同就意味著拆掉房屋。目前仅有不足50条胡同受到保护，严禁进行开发。
北京市政府制定了严格的规定，对四合院的改建提出了众多限制。比如，你不能把树拔掉，窗户的尺寸也是规定好了的。还有外墙的粉刷形式。由于许多四合院所在地区都没有城市下水道系统，铺设供热和排污管道带来了额外的成本。尽管如此，大多数西方买家还是想尽办法进行大量的改造，添加了最新的水暖系统和三层窗。
普利策(Pulitzer Prize)现场新闻摄影奖获得者刘香成在第一眼看到一处正在出售的传统北京四合院后，仅用30秒就决定买下来。然后刘香成就大动干戈。他说：“许多房屋都陈旧不堪，我只能彻底改造。”他按照习俗将外墙粉刷成朱红色，但他也安装了蒸汽浴，并在不锈钢厨房内装上了天窗。
刘香成说，修建地下室的时候最吓人。他担心开凿地下电影放映室会打通到传说中中国领导人疏散的地道中。刘香成没有拔掉院子中有著100年历史的石榴树；每年秋季在院子中举行聚会时，他都会把这粉红色的果实加入到马提尼酒中。
美国律师龙安志(Laurence Brahm)自上世纪80年代开始就一直在北京生活，拥有三处四合院，其中一处是旅馆。他夸耀说，除了管道、电力和供暖设施外，其它一切都保持原样。当然，不包括他在原来可能用作化粪池的一个地下防空洞中开设的酒吧。
他说，来到由四合院改建的新红资客栈(Red Capital Residence)的客人们经常会要求他帮忙做政府部门的工作，以便也能购买四合院。龙安志说：“我只能说：对不起，祝你好运。”
典型的四合院都蕴含了风水的原理。走过红门后，会有一个照壁，用意是把鬼挡住。“之”字形走廊引导客人来到外院中U形排列的建筑前。朱红色的房梁和灰砖支撑著方瓦屋顶，边缘部分是亮绿色、蓝色或金色的格栅，带有花鸟的图案。
要想从一个房间进入另一个房间，你必须经过露天的院子，这在中国北方寒冷的冬季中可不太好受。但这也是魅力的一部分。香港建筑师Kamwah Chan说，脚下是坚实的土地，头顶是蔚蓝的天空。
