Yizu Hill Villa

Yizu Hill Villa, built in 1919, was a private villa owned by Xu Xian, a Chinese expatriate of Tongan origin living in Vietnam. After having made a fortune by running a rice business in Vietnam, Xu Xian built the Yizu Hill Villa on Kulangsu, meaning contentment. He then settled on Kulangsu. The building, aligned west-east, demonstrates the typical Amoy Deco style, masonry structure with two stories above the ground and one story semi-underground. With a width of 20.23 meters and a depth of 18.3 meters, the building covers a floor area of 1,022.2 square meters. The villa generates a strong sense of main body and rhythmic beauty through a series of designs: support of four large columns on the facade, protuberant double-arch windows casings, fluted embedded columns, smooth and outspread lines, distinctive parapet walls, and ancient Greek column-style decorations. In the courtyard stands a tall European-style gatehouse which is decorated with shield-shaped reliefs of different sizes, flowers and Greek column-style. Sculpture spirit screen lies between the gatehouse and the main building with large stone steps as a transition. The two sides of the stone steps are flower beds and stone benches with the short walls bearing characteristic interlock reliefs.