culture – Jeffrey Wong saves Chinese houses in Tongli

Today I went with a delegation of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club and Jeffrey Wong, chairman of the heritage village for art and culture in Tongli, part of Suzhou. Jeffrey (64) made his capital in textile and is now trying to do something useful with it. He buys up buildings are being demolished, and puts them in a warehouse in Tongli. Already over 150 buildings are there, including the Jingan Temple from Shanghai, that has been replaced by a concrete monster.
Initially he set up shop in the Qingpu district in Shanghai, but got overtaken by another development, had to pick up his houses and moved earlier this year to Tongli, where the government proved to be more hospitable.
The terrain that has been picked for the reconstruction of the buildings is rather swampy, but Jeffrey estimates that he can have rebuilt China here in fifteen to twenty years. The site of the SFCC will have pictures very soon.
Together with the beautiful town of Tongli and some other attractions this promises to become a very attractive part of Jiangsu province for tourism.
The plan is to change the village into a place where artists can work, free of charge.