After Traveling the World, We Took Over an Old Courtyard in Dali!

Every home is like a condensed storybook, filled with the memories of one’s life and the dreams one cherishes. For the entire past year, we were constantly on a journey of living around the world, staying in all sorts of homes around the world. Waking up each day in a different bed, looking out at completely different views, we kept asking ourselves: what does our ideal life really look like?

From staying in a home with a cat garden in Chiang Mai, a wooden house for traditional Japanese cuisine, a pure white farm in Scotland, to a fairy-tale stone cottage in an alley of the Peruvian highlands, we gradually realized that we no longer felt attached to the bustling traffic and concrete jungles of big cities. Instead, we wanted our future life, like the owners of these homes, to be closer to nature and connected to the earth. We hope the place we live in doesn’t have to be large, but it should be convenient enough, with its own unique story and culture, a neighborhood that knows how to enjoy life. More importantly, we want to live in a small courtyard with history and stories. This way, we can display all the collectibles we’ve brought back from our travels around the world over the years, and after every long journey, there will be a warm place waiting for us to return.

After much searching and filtering back in China, we found ourselves heading to China’s utopia, the ultimate destination for an idealistic life—Dali, Yunnan, hoping to start a new life here. After over a month of moving around, searching, filtering, and negotiating in Dali, today, we’ve finally achieved another small goal in life.

Su Rou’s life in 2020 will unfold here!

Our first moving house room tour! Come check out our home base in China—the soon-to-be "Su Rou Travel Museum"!!

The open kitchen in the side house has a design we fell in love with at first sight: it can instantly transform into a mini bar facing the courtyard! While cooking, you can enjoy the scenery, and even the dining table blends into a painting.

Before entering the main house, you step up a few low old bluestone steps into a semi-outdoor porch space. The old wooden table and wicker chair we picked up from the countryside complement the carved door panels behind them perfectly. In front of the steps is our favorite new companion in the courtyard: a small red maple! Its leaves remain vividly red like fire for three seasons of the year, allowing us to not only watch the rain, listen to the rain, and bask in the sun here, but also enjoy the pleasure of maple viewing at any time.~

The ground floor retains the traditional Bai ethnic building structure and many original wooden elements, such as beams, columns, and six pairs of old wooden doors. The space is divided equally into four rooms: the left and right sides are kept as small guest rooms, while the two middle rooms are combined into a large living room. One half is made into a huge tatami area where friends can roll around, play games, and watch TV no matter how many come; the other half is a more formal living room, filled with solid wood shelving units that will soon display our travel collectibles from around the world, becoming the core exhibition hall of our "Su Rou Museum."

Step up the staircase that has been rebuilt outdoors, and please follow us to the second floor!!

While the ground floor preserves the traditional Bai-style old house, the second floor has been transformed into a more modern and comfortable setup. The four-room layout was merged into two large suites, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows that soak in all of Dali’s bright sunshine. The highlight is the extra-large balcony outside! Sit here with a cup of tea, look down to admire the flowers, plants, and trees in the courtyard, and look up to see the layered tile roofs, with tall wild bamboo interspersed. On clear days, you can even see the distant Erhai Lake and the mountain silhouettes across the way.

Finally, we have enough spacious room to live, work, and film freely! The master bedroom’s super king-size bed with bed frame fulfills Sue’s dream of being a happy homebody. The small wicker table and chairs in the living room, carefully decorated with our travel photos and ornaments, will likely become a frequent set for many of our recordings. The full-length mirror with a solid wood frame literally knock Sue out; now, the time spent gazing at herself in the mirror will only get longer...

Another design feature of this courtyard that won me over is the traditional wooden desk and chair by the master bedroom window... Working while facing the huge floor-to-ceiling window, watching Dali’s sky and clouds drift by—what a feeling that will be!!!

With the same area as the master bedroom, the adjacent second bedroom is also the size of two standard rooms. We plan to use it as a place to entertain friends or for parents to stay long-term and enjoy. On the opposite side of the same super king-size bed, a mini tatami area has been designed for the second floor. On rainy days, by the floor-to-ceiling window, listening to the pitter-patter of raindrops outside while sipping tea and taking a nap—what more could one want in life!!! Even better, the previous owner cleverly used the high ceiling of the traditional roof to add a small loft bed that can be climbed up and down. If friends or family bring kids, this place will definitely thrill them with joy!!

Second-floor sun terrace

After arriving in Yunnan, we discovered that wild cacti are everywhere on the village walls and old rooftops! And there’s one growing right on the tiles next to our terrace!!! The huge cactus is simply a stunning photography backdrop! We decided to name it “Nazha”! (Sue said, “Should we name the solar water heater ‘Reba’ then…”)

Although the courtyard currently still looks as it was when we took over, over the next while, we plan to gradually add our own unique designs and ideas to make it truly our home.

In Dali, such old village courtyards generally cannot be bought or sold, but can be rented for as long as possible. So we rented it for over 10 years in one go, just so we can wholeheartedly treat it as our home and a long-term “base” in China to take care of. Perhaps one day, it might even become a real "Su Rou Travel Museum" that opens its doors to the public.