Porcelain façade
A full mosaic.
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One of China's strangest buildings, a 1920s French-style mansion in the old French concession, bought in 2002 by the collector Zhang Lianzhi, who covered it inside and out with broken antique porcelain; it opened to visitors in 2007. Its walls are covered with hundreds of millions of shards of Chinese porcelain from different eras, more than 700 million by 2008, along with over 13,000 old vases, plates and bowls set into the walls, stone lions and coloured semi-precious stones, so the whole house looks like a mosaic. Inside are rooms and passages clad in porcelain with antique furniture, and an American news site once listed it among the world's 15 most uniquely designed museums, though transforming a protected historic building this way stirred debate in the city. Tickets are about CNY 50, with opening from 9:00 to 19:00 and last entry at 18:30, per visitor guides. The façade alone is worth a stop, and the house is close to Heping Road's shopping street.
A full mosaic.
Set in the walls.
Inside.
72 Chifeng Road, Heping District, Tianjin
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