An intricately decorated six-meter-high screen wall caught my eye as the gate slowly opened to a private home in the eastern outskirts of Beijing. On entering, I was stunned. I felt like I was setting foot into an open-air museum equipped with a large collection of screen walls . The spacious courtyard is home to up to ten screen walls adorned with gorgeous brick carvings.

Falling in love with the traditional art form

The owner here is Zhang Yipei, an ardent collector of screen walls. Although constructed about 100 years ago, most of the screen walls Zhang has collected are still lustrous despite the passage of time. Judging by the superb brick quality and the incredible exquisiteness of the carved patterns, the original owners of these screen walls might have been extremely wealthy and had a high social status, I thought. To my surprise, however, most of them are from common households in remote villages in North China's Shanxi province, some of which are even not accessible by vehicle.

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