XING Weiying’s life is full of twists and turns.

Brought up in Jiading’s Huangdu Town, Xing has engaged in a number of professions. She enlisted in the army, practiced medicine, studied design and in her free time, has traveled to more than 40 countries as well as the Arctic and Antarctica.

Among many intriguing stories in her life, the most recent is about Huilaotang, a mansion that’s more than 500 years old.

In 1506, Wang Ao, a chancellor during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) retired and returned to his hometown — Luxiang Village in Suzhou. Wang had brought great honor to this village and he built a medium-sized guild hall as a place for his friends and fellow countrymen to get together, which he named “Huilaotang.”

Huilaotang’s glory faded through the course of hundreds of years and it became a dangerous building that couldn’t be used for anything. The main building has tilted toward the south, and there are birds flying in and out to make their nests.

Huilaotang belongs to Xing’s husband’s family these days. When she found it, the decayed building has lost its old-time charm. However, she still found it mysteriously enchanting and was determined to restore its to its former beauty.

The biggest obstacle was that Xing didn’t know anything about renovating ancient buildings.

However, at the end of 2003, after gaining her family’s approval and a permit from Suzhou’s cultural relic management department, Xing began to repair and renovate Huilaotang.

She was constantly on the road. She went back and forth between Suzhou and Shanghai. Her car traveled about 120,000 kilometers over the nexst two years.

But as the renovation project advanced, Xing realized she did not have the knowledge and experience necessary to see it through. To get a result that would satisfy her, she had to go back to school.

So, in 2010, at the age of 48, Xing quit her banking job, where she was earning a million yuan (US$153,846) a year and became a student at Tongji University to study ancient architecture preservation.

“Human beings have infinite potential if we are willing to explore,” Xing always tells her daughter, which is an accurate reflection of her own life.

Xing was one of the three sisters born into a family in Huangdu, Jiading. As the eldest, she was the family’s main breadwinner. She learned how to knit sweaters when she was 6 and was able to do intricate patterns of flowers for her neighbors when she was 8. When Xing turned 12, she also worked in the local rural production team to earn extra work points after school.

By the time she was 16, she exceled in skills ranging from spinning and weaving, to making rice dumplings and looking after cattle and sheep.

She became her mother’s biggest helper.

So when Xing applied to Nanjing Military Region Medical Academy as a nursing major, she soon became the “big sister” to her schoolmates for she had the skills and good heart to take care of them.

After 10 years in the army, Xing started work in a government office. A few years after that, in 1999, she became a senior manager at the Shanghai branch of the Minsheng Bank.

With everything in her life running smoothly, little did Xing know that when she pushed open Huilaotang’s ramshackle door in the summer of 2003, her comfortable lifestyle was about to change forever.

She never expected that the renovation project would take three years.

Six months after the main building was repaired, Xing found the owner of the annex — the embroidery building, which in the Ming Dynasty was the residential area of the women in the family. She contacted the owner and persuaded them to let her tear down the wall between the main building and the annex, so that Huilaotang would become whole again.

Xing didn’t stop there.

Six months after that, a Ming-style stage was completed by 20 carpenters. The mortise and tenon joint structure as well as each of the laminates was hand-made by these craftsmen.

The new Huilaotang is almost the exact replica of what it was 500 years ago. Xing did not change one bit according to her taste and preferences; instead, she used her architecture knowledge to adjust the temperature and humidity around and inside the house to make it a more comfortable place.

Ruan Yisan, head of the National Historical and Cultural Cities Research Center, spoke highly of the renovations and has brought many people to visit and would point out that this is the classic architecture style in the Jiajing Period (1522-1566), presented in its full authenticity.

Since 2007, the Huilaotang has undergone four renovations. Some people say that the work done on this building was even more meticulous than what the government would have done.

To carry on the work, Xing has sold a villa and spent nearly all her savings. She describes the repairing process as a swallow building its nest carrying bits of earth time after time. “I’ve had great fun in the process, like I’m a person during the Ming Dynasty building her own home,” she said.

Xing has a wide circle of aquaitances. When the first phase of Huilaotang was completed, a friend of hers came to admire the newly renovated building and was amazed at how good a job Xing had done. The friend advised her to make Huilaotang open to the public because it would be a pity if only a few people know about the beauty of this place.

Xing thought that was right. Why not invite more people to experience the culture and history of the building?

However, as excited as she was about this idea, Xing did not want to make the project too commercial. She wanted more people to come and enjoy and still maintain its original feel and cultural ambience.

After some serious consideration, she decided to turn Huilaotang into a boutique hotel, welcoming people interested in traditional Chinese architecture.

Many of the guests who have stayed in Huilaotang have become friends with Xing.

Xing thinks that she and these people have a lot in common and friends like them are something rare to find in life.

“The friends I made and the ancient culture that I got to learn during the process is the greatest return I’ve got for renovating Huilaotang,” Xing said.