If you happen to be a fan of Chinese cinema - specifically the movies of director Zhang Yimou and actress Gong Li - then you already know this place.  The Qiao family courtyard house is where “Raise the Red Lantern” was filmed.  This is one of the six main courtyards within the complex.

When that movie gained international recognition, so did the Qiao home, and tourists have been visiting in significant numbers to see its detailed decoration and ornamentation ever since.  Dozens more movies and television serials in China have been filmed here as well.

An intricately carved wooden screen at the Qiao family courtyard house.  The house is named for Qiao Guifa, a poor merchant who became rich enough to start building this place nearly three hundred years ago.  During the generation after Qiao Guifa, the Qiao family fortune grew to exceed the modern day equivalent of a billion dollars.  Construction and renovation on the family home continued during that generation and after; the home was not considered complete for nearly two centuries.

Red lanterns did not hang everywhere within the complex back when the Qiao family lived here, but they hang here now, courtesy of the movie; and indeed, it is difficult to imagine this place without them.

A rickshaw hidden away on the courtyard grounds.  With a layer of rubber on the wheels, this was a high-class model, the Rolls-Royce of its day.

Detail of the rickshaw.

A courtyard wall.  Courtyard compounds are not unusual in Shanxi Province; over a thousand still exist here, apparently in good repair.  And while the Qiao home is huge, other nearby compounds are much larger; at least one of them is the size of a small town.

Detail of the stone carvings in that wall.  These courtyard compounds served not only as homes but also as business places for the tycoons who owned them a century or two ago.  A lot of trade was done here that affected much of China.

Wood carvings along the eaves.  Shanxi Province has changed since the days when business tycoons built their courtyard homes here.  Today, the province is known for its extensive coal mining - and for the many accidents and fatalities that have accompanied that activity.

More wood carvings in a doorway.

A heavy door knocker.

Birds in a flowering tree - detail of a stone screen carving on the grounds of the Qiao family home.

Red lantern and doorway.  This was the second of three stops on our day visiting sites southwest of the city of Taiyuan, in Shanxi Province.  The Qiao family courtyard house is about 35 miles from Taiyuan, midway between the Jinci Temple and Pingyao, and is certainly worth a stop if already visiting either of the other two locations.