Professor Wei Qi has a cottage in Donggutuo village that sits on a small plateau in Yangyuan county, Hebei. It's rudimentary, to say the least - the toilet is a hole in the ground, and that's why his wife has refused to come. But he has no shortage of other visitors.
They don't come for the fresh air, the organic food or the delightfully drunk villagers. They are palaeoanthropologists coming to this and dozens of nearby villages, which belong to an important prehistoric archaeological site known as the Nihewan Basin, in the hopes of a landmark discovery that would change our understanding of prehistoric man. So far, that goal - finding a human fossil - has proven elusive. But scientists are spurred on by evidence of million-year-old stone tools that suggest our ancestors on the mainland go back much further than commonly believed.
Wei, 72, hopes the cottage, which he named the Nihewan Apeman Station, can help facilitate a multinational collaboration of palaeoanthropologists. Current Chinese law requires foreigners to obtain written permission from the State Council - to essentially be Premier Wen Jiabao's guest - to pitch a tent.
That is why Wei's cottage is important. 'As long as you stay in my house, police won't come and deport you - not because they respect an old man, but because the law does not address visits to me,' he said.
Professor Susan Keates from Oxford University in Britain drops a typical note after a few memorable nights here: 'Wei Qi's station at Donggutuo is a very nice place to stay ... and one is made to feel at home.'
If Nihewan becomes a hotspot in the future, it will be because it has an interesting history. Until about 40,000 to 30,000 years ago, the area was a lake with hominids living on its shore for at least two million years. Sometimes the water would rise and flood the settlements - bad news for our ancestors, but good news for palaeoanthropologists seeking evidence of early humans.