Gao Ming rebuilt the Sichuan Tea Manor

History. Dui Chuan Village, originally called Dui Village, takes its name from the Ming Jiajing period, when the Huang family lived to the south-west and the Xie family to the south-east, facing each other. The Dui Chuan tea estate began as the state-run Gaoming County Agricultural Demonstration Farm founded in 1951; in 1956 it became the state-run Gaoming County Mechanised Tea Demonstration Farm, and in 1962 it was renamed Dui Chuan Tea Farm. The tea factory was once one of the highest-yielding tea estates in the Pearl River Delta, and its Dui Chuan tea was famous, sold to Hong Kong, Macao and Southeast Asia. The estate is built against a hill and surrounded by lakes, with beautiful scenery. It has over 300 mu of tea gardens, with Triassic acidic red soil suitable for tea; the terrain is low hills and terraces at an average altitude of 33.6 metres, with gentle slopes. An artificial reservoir surrounds the hill, covering 33 hectares. After 2000, with market diversification, production and sales of Dui Chuan tea declined, and parts of the garden were abandoned or converted. The site. In midsummer 2017, the architects drove through rows of under-construction suburban villas and an operating tourist area to reach an island in the middle of the former artificial reservoir. On the island, large trees stand, and houses from different periods scattered among the trees and semi-abandoned tea gardens look slightly weathered. The project reconstructs the tea estate as a cultural and tourist destination, restoring the old factory buildings and tea terraces and inserting new guest rooms, a tea-processing workshop and a visitors centre. The design treats the existing tea landscape as the primary material, with new buildings kept low and of local material so that they sit within the rural scene. It is a demonstration of how a disused collective tea farm can be reactivated as a contemporary tea culture destination, preserving the working landscape rather than turning it into a sterile heritage theme park.