Chinese embrace natural draw of log cabin holiday retreats
With 500 of the timber structures built near cities across the mainland, people are embracing such spacious homes as an escape from city life
Think of log cabins and what comes to mind are charming chalets in the Alps, rustic retreats tucked away in the woods, cosy second homes in Vail and Aspen.
But these days, oak log homes - solid, spacious, and earthy - are showing up in unexpected places, including brand new developments in Xiamen, Wenzhou and Shanghai.
In what is a new and surprising addition to the residential landscape around bustling Chinese cities, developers are looking towards log homes as an innovative way to appeal to buyers seeking out interesting second or holiday homes.
"Our souls need a certain amount of connection to nature - and that's particularly so in China, with so many people living in high-rise apartment buildings in densely populated areas," says Lynn Gastineau, owner of Gastineau Log Homes in the US state of Missouri, a company at the forefront of the move towards log cabin homes in China. "When you have people in that kind of an environment, there's more of a need to get back to nature."
Gastineau - whose company has been around since 1977 - first went to China in 1995 to discuss the idea of doing a log cabin development in Beijing (at the time investors were looking at building a Disneyland there).
"They wanted log homes adjacent to the project for people to stay in while visiting the park," she says. "They also had acreage where they were going to put a golf course with large executive log homes built around the course. The economy became such that both projects were not completed.