The Li Hongzhang Former Residence preserves the family compound of one of 19th-century China's most consequential statesmen. Li Hongzhang dominated Chinese foreign policy for forty years — negotiating with foreign powers after the Sino-French and Sino-Japanese wars, overseeing China's first railways and telegraph lines, and managing the catastrophic aftermath of the Boxer Uprising. His family home in central Hefei is now a museum dedicated to his life and legacy.
The compound itself is elegant Huizhou-influenced architecture: carved wooden screen panels, tiled courtyards, and a gate flanked by stone lions that gives the place a formal gravity appropriate to a minister of empire. The displays cover Li's career in detail, with documents and photographs that include images from his visits to Europe and America in 1896 — one of the first Chinese statesmen to make such a tour. It's a worthwhile stop for anyone interested in how China navigated the late nineteenth century.