Restoring ancestral home in village
Apr 16, 2019 6:06:38 GMT -5
Post by wanderer on Apr 16, 2019 6:06:38 GMT -5
On my trip to China previously, I found my family's ancestral home. It is made of brick and parts of the roof and walls have collapsed. It has been abandoned for many decades, I think. I would like to restore the house to as close to the original as possible. It's a very small structure with no water or electricity and I'd like to keep it that way - it won't be for living in, but something I'd like to do. When it's done, I'm thinking of putting in an altar with the pictures and tablet of my ancestors.
The thing is - although the house doesn't have much monetary value (from what I can guess), I don't want to run afoul of any laws. The village secretary has a land title showing that the house belonged to my great-great grandfather, and I also have a letter from him verifying my identity as an heir to this great great grandfather. But my great great grandfather had many many descendants ... so would it be OK for me restore the place without checking in with every single one of his descendants?
No one in my extended family that I know are interested in this project. I'm not even sure why I want to do it. But it would be so nice to see the house return to what it was in the past.
So that's my first concern - the legal part.
The second is the cost part. Would it be very costly? The front part of the house is overgrown with tall grasses and weeds, so I'm thinking of keeping the beautiful tree (not sure what it is) in the front garden, but I need to do some landscaping so I can even walk in. Then just basic repairs like filling in the holes in the walls with local bricks and patching the roof. It's a single story building, so thankfully no stairs or anything like that.
To give you a sense of how small it is, the whole house is basically like the size of a very large master bedroom in an apartment in any developed country.
