Welcome to a mansion of memories to relive the past

Prince Qing's Mansion is also known as Qingwangfu. [Photo provided to China Daily]

As the saying goes, Xi'an encapsulates three thousand years of Chinese history and Beijing, one thousand. But if you want to see what China went through during its turbulent times in the 20th century, visit Tianjin, which neighbors Beijing.

One of the best places to relive the stormy past is Prince Qing's Mansion, also known as Qingwangfu, which was home to generations of people, from a former imperial eunuch to a prince. It also housed government offices.

With a newly renovated mansion, a spacious garden, a small museum and a townhouse boutique hotel, Prince Qing's Mansion is a place to take a peek into the past and savor the moments.

The hotel has just joined the Small Luxury Hotels of the World, making it the first and so far the only one with such a tag in Tianjin. Last year, it was adjudged the best-designed hotel by The Bund magazine.

"We decided to build the first boutique hotel in Tianjin because of the confidence these old houses gave us," says Feng Jun, chairman of the Tianjin Historical Architecture Restoration and Development and proprietor of the hotel. "The mansion was built at a time when the East and the West (architectural styles) first met. The owners used the most advanced Western technologies to give shape to a lifestyle that is purely Chinese."

Built in 1922 by Xiaodezhang, the last chief eunuch of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the mansion is a perfect fusion of Eastern and Western architecture. It was later sold to Prince Qing Zaizhen, an early promoter of modernization in China, who spent 22 years there in seclusion.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the mansion served as an office building for several government departments.