A historic home from home

Editor's note: Zheng Ziru was once a Peking opera singer, but is now a free stage director. She has a great passion for Chinese tradition, history, and, especially, architecture. After 10 years of searching, she finally found an old house in Yaoziyu, a fortress village built more than 400 years ago at the foot of Erdaoguan Great Wall in the Huairou district of suburban Beijing. She has made the village her second home in the capital.

I fell in love with this dilapidated house at first sight when I saw it on a winter afternoon five years ago. I was so excited, and told myself, "That's what I want."

The house was lit up by the afternoon sunshine, which gave it a warm look, even though there was unmelted snow on the stone step. The back wall had half collapsed and the rotten wooden window frames and doors showed the traces of the passing years. "It must be a place with a lot of stories," an inner voice told me. I'm always interested in stories and old things.