The couple who rebuilt a Scotsman’s castle on a Chinese mountain and made it centrepiece of eco-tourism resort
First they built a road, then came the cranes, concrete and 40,000 tonnes of granite to recreate hilltop retreat in Moganshan, near Hangzhou. Grant Horsfield and Delphine Yip explain how they did it – and why
Sometimes inspiration comes from the most unexpected of places. For Grant Horsfield, a South Africa-born entrepreneur who moved to China in 2005, it was the serendipitous discovery of a remote, abandoned mountain village in the bamboo forests of Moganshan, about an hour’s drive west of Hangzhou. The discovery was the spark for his development of innovative, eco-friendly tourist resorts in the area, including a hilltop castle.
A keen sportsman, Horsfield says he was looking for somewhere to hike and mountain bike, and was drawn by the area’s unspoilt landscape and cooler mountain air. The area had long been a popular retreat, initially for European missionaries during the late 1800s escaping the summer heat in the cities, and then China’s wealthy, including a few notorious Chinese gangsters during the 1920s.
With villa renting for US$29,000 a weekend, no wonder Moganshan is talked of as the Hamptons of China
Some of the early Western visitors built European-style villas with swimming pools and lawns that have now been turned into guest houses as the area became a popular weekend escape. The Moganshan region has about 15,500 residents, who are employed in agriculture, industry and tourism.
Convinced that a nature-inspired getaway would prove attractive, Horsfield founded a company, naked Group, in 2007 (with a focus on eco-friendly, luxury projects) and, together with his architect wife, Delphine Yip, set about creating a boutique hotel in Moganshan that the couple called “naked Home”.
Naked Stables, consisting of 121 villas and rammed earth huts in a secluded valley with horse stables, tea plantations and a bamboo forest, followed in 2011, and was the first resort in China to earn a LEED Platinum rating for green construction.
“Ten years ago, no one was travelling for weekend getaways, mountain biking, rock climbing, or fishing, but today people are starting to want to escape outdoors and so we’ve already seen an astronomical growth in experiential travel, especially eco-tourism,” Horsfield says.
