At No. 1 Diaomazhuang Alley, a single red-brick mansion stands alone in a cleared urban lot. A heavy carved granite inner doorframe bears the name Yuyuan. Flanking the entrance, an engraved couplet speaks of running water and returning clouds. Inside the grey-black brick walls, the single-story house rests under a pitched roof of small black tiles.

Physician Liu Jianxun laid these bricks in 1945 over the ashes of the 1938 Wenxi Fire. He built this 600-square-meter, cross-shaped sanctuary to honor his father, Liu Benyu, a military doctor of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. To combat the humid Changsha summers, builders installed elevated wooden floors over a specialized moisture-proof layer.

In the front courtyard, a grapevine planted during that 1945 reconstruction still twists upward. For decades, its thick canopy offered shade to the Liu family, while neighborhood children routinely plucked its summer fruit over the wall. Today, the 1945 grapevine still casts shadows across the four symmetrical wing-rooms, a quiet survivor of both fire and progress.