At the foot of Mount Huang in Anhui province , the Wan Cui Lou building is overshadowed by other traditional structures on Tunxi Ancient Street. But inside, the private museum reveals an unparalleled collection of artefacts representing cultural life in Anhui through the ages.
In typical Anhui style, the five-storey Wan Cui Lou building was built from dark timber. Most of the more than 2,000 items in its collection, including delicately carved furniture, architectural features and porcelain, were acquired from local families. Specialists say the collection could be worth about 300 million yuan.
Wan Renhui , 59, set up the museum in 1999 to preserve the remains of the region's distinctive arts and crafts. Mr Wan has poured more than 20 million yuan into the venture and, like owners of other private museums, has found it tough to keep it going.
Mr Wan majored in painting at university but shifted his focus to business in the mid-1980s. He traded sweaters and car parts in Guangdong and became captivated by Anhui's famous mountain as he shuttled between his company and his home town in Jiangxi .
In the late 1980s and 1990s, he saw many traditional architectural items from the Ming and Qing dynasties snapped up by overseas collectors and decided to do what he could to stem the outflow. 'It is a shame if a culture is lost,' he said.
He started out collecting pieces indigenous to Anhui, but has also made a number of significant purchases not directly related to the region. One, a Ming dynasty stone sculpture of Kuixing, the god of examinations, was bought from a Taiwanese dealer just before it was due to be shipped to Taiwan.