Miniature replicas foster big feelings of nostalgia in China
Art form tells stories of history, transformation
BAODING, China — Not long after Shen Peng’s grandfather died, his grandmother visited the site of the house where she and her husband once lived. The government had demolished the house, in northern China, nearly 15 years before as part of a redevelopment project. The site still hadn’t been developed, and she could barely walk around the family’s old plot because the grass was so overgrown.
Shen wondered: Could he help her relive her memories another way?
For more than six months, he labored in secret after his day job as a hairdresser. Finally, Shen, now 31, presented his grandmother with a surprise: a handcrafted 1:20-scale replica of her old home.
There was the wire clothesline in the courtyard, draped with a blue blanket cut into the size of a postage stamp. There was the rickety bicycle, outside a shed constructed with foam boards and plaster. Shen had even traveled to the site of the old house to better re-create the fragment of brick wall that remained.
The project led him into a small but growing community of artists in China filling an increasingly urgent demand: miniature replicas of homes that have been demolished, remodeled, or otherwise swept away by China’s modernization.
Designing and collecting miniatures has long been a hobby in the West. In northern Europe during the 17th century, dollhouses were a way for the wealthy to show off their properties; nowadays, aficionados cite reasons ranging including escapism and aspirational interior design. But in China, where artists say the form is relatively new, miniatures have become a way to reckon with a society that has changed at a dizzying pace.
Over the past 40 years, China has transformed from one of the world’s poorest countries into its second-largest economy. The share of city residents has tripled, and vast numbers of Chinese have seen the structures of their childhoods disappear, often through government redevelopment campaigns.
“Nobody would actually want to live in these houses again. Once people have gotten used to nice things, they can’t handle these shabby ones,” Shen said. But “the pace of life now is too fast. Just because you live in a high-rise doesn’t mean you’re happy.”
The miniatures “offer a kind of spiritual enjoyment,” he said, “when all your material needs are satisfied.”
The craft remains relatively niche: On Chinese social media, artists with sizable followings number only about a dozen. But the artists’ posts about their creations can amass hundreds of thousands of likes. Shen has 400,000 followers on Douyin, China’s TikTok.
Their pieces vary by budget and geography. Homes in northern China were often one-story, built from stone or mud, while those in the south were taller and wooden. Some miniatures re-create only a home’s exterior, sparsely accented with details like a tiny chicken in the yard.
‘Once you’re at a certain age, with generations above and below you . . . the past feels more precious.’
SHEN PENG, miniature replica artist, on re-creating his grandparents’ house and childhood home
Others have intricate interiors with working light bulbs and family portraits on the walls.
If the artists are lucky, their clients provide photographs. But often they must work from memories. (Cameras, artists point out, were a luxury until relatively recently.)
That was the case for Shen as he crafted his grandparents’ house and then his own childhood home. Both were near Baoding, China, now a city of 9 million in Hebei province. His grandparents’ house was razed around 2005. Shen’s father then rebuilt their family home, in a village on the city’s outskirts. Shen now lives there with his wife and young son.
“When I was a teenager, I never thought about nostalgia,” Shen said. “But once you’re at a certain age, with generations above and below you and all kinds of pressure, the past feels more precious.”
Shen had spent virtually his entire life in his village, but he knew that eventually he would need to move to a city, to give his son better opportunities. “If we don’t leave a record, those born after the 2000s won’t have any impression of this,” he said.
Shen has turned down commission requests, opting to work only on pieces with which he has a personal connection. But others have made this a full-time career.
Li Yizhong, 40, used to make large-scale sculptures for office buildings and museums around Jinan, the capital of Shandong province, in eastern China. But after a friend requested a miniature of his demolished childhood home as a favor, Li posted the finished product on social media and found himself flooded with inquiries. He now has more than 1.5 million followers on Douyin.
"This is more meaningful" than his previous work, said Li, who works with several assistants. "There's more feeling, more warmth."
Each project is an exercise in intimacy and collaboration. At the beginning of the roughly one-month process, Li sends the client digital renderings of the miniature. Throughout, he confirms details such as the pattern of bricks in the courtyard and sends photos of his progress.
Some clients adjust their instructions as faded memories come into focus. Li recalled one prospective client who spent most of an hourlong phone call crying as she reminisced about her old home. Projects for customers without photos are the most challenging, but those are the customers most desperate to regain a vision of their old home.
Younger viewers on social media can find the urge to document these old houses confusing. Some comment disbelievingly on how run-down the houses look. Even some of Li’s assistants, many of whom are recent art school graduates, said they had little familiarity with the countryside.
But there are still young people who have experienced, and long for, the older way of life.
Last summer, Lu Qinghuan, now 21, spent one month with Li as an apprentice, learning to make the Shandong village home where his grandparents raised him.
Lu had mixed feelings about his own journey away from the countryside, first to a small city for middle school, then to the bigger coastal city of Yantai for a degree in materials science. He was put off by the competitiveness of cities, and he missed his grandfather, an elementary school teacher, who had instilled in him the importance of education.
“Today, very few young people stay in their hometowns,” Lu said. “This is a natural progression. There’s no way to decisively say whether some things are good or bad.”
He settled on a compromise: After graduating from college, rather than compete for an office job, he would make miniatures full time.
Lu recently finished one for Li Shanshan, a restaurateur in Yantai, who had ordered a replica of her mother’s childhood home for her mother’s 70th birthday. Her original plan was to build a display case for the $950 miniature, but after she unveiled the miniature to her extended family over a video call, the group erupted with stories.
Li, 43, is now considering taking the miniature on a tour to show relatives who live elsewhere in China. “It’s not just something that you look at twice and then leave there,” she said. “Are you kidding? This is my old house. It’s just that I can’t go in.”