A remarkable piece of real estate hit the Beijing property market earlier this year, accompanied by a description that read: “The residence where the last royal of the Qing dynasty stayed to avoid summer heat in Beijing.” But a Thursday article in the Beijing Morning Post has cast doubt on whether the building is as historical as advertised.
The house was priced at a cool 138 million yuan (nearly $21 million) by Lianjia, the biggest real estate company in China. According to a listing on Lianjia’s website, the mansion, which occupies 1,067 square meters of land, is located in Fragrant Hills Park, in Beijing’s northwestern suburbs. The property was removed from Lianjia’s website following the newspaper report.
Zhu Cheng, the Lianjia real estate agent mentioned in the listing, told Sixth Tone the house is still available for sale, but he declined to make any comment on whether the house was a historical or modern building. Lianjia’s public relations department could not be reached for comment when Sixth Tone attempted to contact them on Thursday.
The opulent building supposedly belonged to the late Jin Moyu, a princess of the Qing dynasty, which fell in 1912. Jin died in 2014 at the age of 95.
According to a staff member at the Beijing Administration of Cultural Heritage, the mansion was built in the last few years. She told Sixth Tone her office had confirmed that based on historical records, the building is not a registered cultural relic.
A spokesperson from the Fragrant Hills Park management office told Sixth Tone the mansion is not actually located in the park and has nothing to do with the park. “We had never heard of this place before we found out Lianjia was making using the park’s good reputation to sell the property,” they said. The management office has sent a lawyer’s letter to Lianjia to correct the misinformation.
Real estate giant Lianjia was founded in 2001 and now employs more than 80,000 people in 24 cities across the country. However, its rise to market leader has not been without bumps.
An investigation in February by the housing authority in Shanghai accused it of misleading potential buyers and charging extortionate interest rates on loans. As a result, the company was ordered to stop selling all financial products.
Ziroom, a subsidiary of Lianjia offering long-term apartment rentals, made headlines earlier this year when one tenant was robbed and another found out her roommate had died weeks before his body was discovered.
Additional reporting by Wang Lianzhang.
(Header image: An exterior view of the mansion advertised as the former home of a Qing dynasty princess in Beijing, July 6, 2016. VCG )
fanyiyingthepapercn Rising Tones property House advertised as ancestral estate of late princess turns out to be newly built. No 
