Instant Antiquity

Aman moved heaven and earth to create its new resort, turning a centuries-old Chinese village into a modern retreat, brick by brick

- Pat Nourse

A man’s new resort in China is its boldest yet. That might sound like a big call when you consider that the group’s first property in China, which opened in Beijing in 2008, occupies outbuildings of the Empress Cixi’s Summer Palace, and offers guests a back door (literally) into the grounds of the palace itself.

But while remarkable locations are something of an Aman signature (a dozen of its properties are in or adjoin UNESCO World Heritage sites – Amanjiwo at Borobudur, for instance, or Amangalla, set in Galle Fort in Sri Lanka), Amanyangyun, its fourth resort in China, involves a wilder imagining.

Remarkable is perhaps not a word you’d use to describe its location on the south-west fringe of Shanghai, 45 minutes’ drive from the centre of town. Or at least it wasn’t until Ma Dadong, a Fuzhou-born entrepreneur, decided he wanted to rescue a forest of thousand-year-old camphor trees that was going to be lost in the construction of a vast new reservoir in his home province of Jiangxi. A decade and many, many dollars later, the first of the 10,000 camphors he has relocated nearly 800 kilometres south are flourishing, and have created a unique backdrop for Amanyangyun.