SURY Resort Moganshan: Industrial Meets Mountain Charm

Reading the Local Language of the Mountains

When my clients approached me with this project, they had already visited Emerald Hills, my first boutique hotel project in Moganshan, which comprises Hütte 5 and Hütte 7. They chose to work with me based on what they saw there — how my adaptive reuse of existing buildings resulted in an award-winning project.

It was their first venture into the hospitality industry, which made the trust they placed in me all the more meaningful.

SURY opened in 2018 in a valley in the Moganshan area, along a scenic mountain road known locally as the "Ten-Mile Gallery." The design fuses modern industrial style with rustic mountain charm — a balance I keep coming back to in my work.

The main building at dusk — a former village warehouse reborn as a three-storey, steel-framed structure with a dark, rusted-metal facade that gives it an urban edge against the Moganshan forest.

Why Moganshan: A Place Where Design Meets Rural Rejuvenation

Moganshan is widely recognized as the birthplace of China's modern bed-and-breakfast movement. What began with a handful of pioneering lodges in the early 2000s has grown into hundreds of licensed guesthouses across the county — and the region became the testing ground for how design, tourism, and village life can reinforce one another.

SURY is part of the Chinese Countryside Rejuvenation project, in which tourism developments bring jobs and economic opportunity to remote corners of China. Under this model, investors typically lease farmers' buildings for 20 years and pay the entire rent upfront — providing the farmer with immediate, guaranteed income. When the lease ends, the farmer can either take back the building or renew the lease.

For me, this model shaped the design from the start. Rather than demolish and forget, we embraced adaptive reuse: transforming a former village warehouse and old farmers' houses into a destination that employs and sustains the local community.

The two ideas are, in fact, one story: the minsu (bed and breakfast) movement gave Moganshan a design vocabulary, and the Countryside Rejuvenation model gave it a purpose. Over time, by executing four important projects in this region, I had the chance to become part of this movement myself.

Design & Architecture

SURY consists of three types of buildings:

• The main building — an old warehouse on the main road, rebuilt as a three-storey steel-framed structure containing 10 bedrooms. Its facade has a dark, rusted-metal look, giving it an "urban" character relative to the surrounding village houses.

Facing the main road in the village, the main building's industrial facade deliberately contrasts with the traditional houses around it — SURY's contemporary statement in a rural setting.

• The operations building — connected to the main building, this two-storey structure has concrete columns and brick walls and houses the kitchen and operational facilities. I designed it in a more traditional architectural vocabulary so that it would blend with the surrounding village.

  
  

Adjacent to the main building, the operations wing speaks a more traditional architectural vocabulary — concrete columns, brick walls and garden paths — so it blends quietly into the village fabric.

• The thre mountain lodges (B1 / B2 and B3) — rebuilt on the sites of old farmhouses as three-storey concrete-and-brick structures, using traditional materials so they appear as though they've been there for ages. They have nine and four bedrooms, respectively. Both feature real fireplaces in their lobbies, as well as terraces and balconies.

Lodges B1 and B2 — rebuilt on old farmhouse sites in concrete and brick with terraces and balconies, they look as though they've stood in the mountainside for generations.

The living room's textured grey walls are the old barn's roof tiles, re-laid as an interior element — the building's memory literally wrapped around its new life. Patterned textiles and a sculptural fireplace complete a room built for slow mountain evenings.

Lodge B3. Real fireplaces warm the lobbies, while every terrace opens toward the Ten-Mile Gallery of Moganshan.

Even the bathrooms keep the dialogue going: warm tile, dark timber and a freestanding tub by the window — rural comfort without the clichés.

SURY Moganshan guest bedroom, where exposed brick and warm timber bring together industrial character and rustic mountain living, with views of the surrounding mountains.

My Philosophy: Responding to Place, Not Imposing on It

Design, to me, is not something you simply "shake out of a tree." It is an act of careful observation, cultural synthesis, and restraint. With SURY, I wanted to read the local language of Moganshan and respond to it — not impose upon it. The result is a resort that feels both contemporary and deeply embedded in its rural context, using local materials and construction methods to challenge conventional notions of what a "decent house" in the countryside should look like.

SURY is my answer to that question: a house the mountain might have built itself, if it had decided to build one.