Amanyangyun Opens Near Shanghai With a Relocated Forest

Amanyangyun, Aman’s fourth property in China and its first in Shanghai, opened on 8 January 2018 in Minhang district, about 27 kilometres south-west of the city centre. The resort is the outcome of a 15-year conservation project that moved a forest and the remains of a village some 700 kilometres across eastern China.

The story starts in Fuzhou, in Jiangxi province, where the construction of a reservoir threatened thousands of old camphor trees and dozens of houses dating from the Ming and Qing dynasties. Ma Dadong, an entrepreneur from the city, set out to save them. Around 10,000 trees were uprooted and transported by road to a site outside Shanghai, and 50 houses were taken apart piece by piece, catalogued and stored. Aman joined the project in 2009 and brought in Kerry Hill Architects, the Singapore-based practice behind Aman Tokyo.

Twenty-six of the houses were rebuilt on the 10-hectare site. Thirteen are offered as Antique Villas, their stone carvings and timber frames restored and fitted with contemporary interiors, and they are joined by 24 newly built Ming Courtyard Suites. The replanted camphor forest surrounds them; its best-known specimen, called the Emperor Tree, stands about 17 metres tall and is said to be more than 1,000 years old.

At the centre of the resort is Nan Shufang, a cultural pavilion modelled on the scholars’ studios of 17th-century China, where guests are introduced to calligraphy and painting. Dining includes Lazhu, a Chinese restaurant inspired by the cooking of Jiangxi, the province the houses and trees came from. The landscape was designed by Dan Pearson Studio.

The result is unusual even by Aman’s standards: a resort whose main attraction is not the view or the location but the survival of the buildings and trees themselves. It also gave Shanghai a countryside counterpart to its city hotels, within reach of Hongqiao airport. OKYTO’s page for Amanyangyun has the details of the stay.