Host: Welcome to Unveiling Yunnan. Today we have Brian Liden, who transformed a centuries-old courtyard into a hotel-style cultural center (the Linden Center) in Yunnan's Dali. Good afternoon Brian.

Brian: Hello Christine. Nice to see you.

Host: First of all, could you please introduce yourself to the audience?

​Brian: Yes. My name is Brian Linden. I am from Chicago from America. The first time I came to China was 1984, so a long time ago, 36 years ago. China ever since then has really been my home. The first time I came to Dali was 1985. In 1985 Dali was considered to be one of the most kind of exotic destinations in China.

Host: How is your life in Dali?

​Brian: A typical day here in Dali in Xizhou, I wake up really early and I take my dog for a walk. My dog is soon to be seven years old. We got her here in Dali. She is a Dali girl and her name is Nala, who is Simba's girlfriend. We will walk into the fields. I'll talk to the people in the fields and then we come here. As breakfast I always like to be here at the Linden Center. I always like to be here as the first person to turn on the coffee to make coffee for people to be with the guests. I try to be here for two hours with the guests when they are eating breakfast. In Xizhou we have three sites. Usually each site is pretty busy. So I will go from site to site to check on the guests to check on the students to see that everybody is doing okay. I love what I do. It's not really work. It's really something that I am honored to do. At least until now I never run out of energy. I really love my life here in China. There are so many cities in China with unique ethnic culture.

Host: why did you choose Dali instead of others?

​Brian: We looked all over China, so we spent two years looking for our first site. We've spent time in Anhui, Jingdezhen, Fujian, Guangdong Diaolou all over and we felt that one of the best places to do our first site was here in Xizhou and there were many reasons. Probably the three most important reasons were one the people. People are very accommodating very welcoming. Second the government was very supportive, and third the buildings here in Xizhou are just so spectacular. They are large and protected, and we thought that in some way we can take one of these buildings and give it new function and purpose. That is somehow would benefit the community, but also allow the world to see a different part of China.

Host: Could you tell us a bit about the history of Linden Centre?

​Brian: I first saw the building in 2004 and it took us about two years to work with the government, and design our ideas before they agreed to let us move ahead with the project. In 2006 we started the restoration of this project and our second site, which is the Linden Education site. It's a Linden Education kind of site. This site here took about 18 months to restore. So it took a long time and we really only use the local workers. We used about 60 to 100 workers a day. As we opened to the public, our first guests were in the spring of 2008.

Host: What features of the old house have been preserved as you developed the center?

​Brian: Developing the center we try to preserve all tangible aspects of the building. We felt that we had to be more creative to incorporate comforts, but then also programming and everything into the building. We had to be creative about that. We didn't want to change anything, so we really haven't. If you look at the building, the physical structure is as it was. The interiors we have brought in, we have incorporated some comforts but without doing anything that could permanently destroy any of the original wood or anything. If you look at the structure right now, they're pretty much as it was before.

Host: If I were a visitor, how could I enjoy good time with locals while staying here?

​Brian: I guess the easiest thing is the Linden Centre has been placed right in the middle of the village. So as soon as you leave our door in many ways, you are immediately immersed in the life of a village. We wanted to choose the site that was living that the people were still having on continuing their jobs and continuing their lives. Every morning at 09：30 we have a free tour of the village. We take our guests on a walking tour of Xizhou and visit various places including some private homes, going into the Er Kuai where they make Er Kuai, where they make Ru Shan. It allows our guests to have an immediate immersion into the life of the village. I believe that Xizhou is mainly local people. I feel that anyone who wants to see a local village can walk out into Xizhou and get lost in the small lanes and really have a local experience. It's something that is hard to find sometimes in China.

Host: Over the past 12 years what role do you think the Linden Centre has played in cultural exchange and inheritance?

​Brian: I guess from two points we feel very important is obviously we've tried to bring the world to Xizhou and we do that in a number of ways. We do it through tourism. People coming to stay at our hotel. We do it through education. So we try to get people here for a longer term. The education programmes focus on how can the village how can China's culture how can Yunnan's diversity be incorporated into the curriculum of the students. So not only do they come here and maybe play in the fields or walk to a hike, but they come here and really try to learn about the local people and interact with the local people. I think the other way we've done is that the Linden Center has in many ways we've put the local people we've made them the focus of our guest experience. This site the Linden Center has 16 guest rooms and we have around 50 staff. So we try to hire more people. We try to make the locals really the focus of an experience here, the ones who benefit the most from people staying here. We want the people to come here, We hope that they will come here because of what has existed here for hundreds of years. We want that to be the focus and that's why we've chosen a site where there's very little tourism and we've chosen a site that in some way can include the locals in our product in what we want the guests to experience and that's always been our mission. That's what we've tried to achieve.

Host: How do you think a region should balance the relationship between economic development and cultural protection?

​Brian: It's always a very challenging question. It's a difficult challenge to balance economic development and heritage protection. As we grow now in Yunnan and we see how attractive Yunnan is to the world, to the rest of China. We should make sure that in some way we are more careful in the growth. Yunnan will be a destination for the world 100 years from now 200 years. What we need to do is come up with a way that I believe will not forfeit some of the social resources and cultural resources that complement the landscape the scenery. People love Yunnan, and many of us love it in the most simple way the beautiful weather, the beautiful scenery looking at Erhai lake looking at Cangshan mountain. But there's so much more to Yunnan as well and I believe the other aspects of Yunnan the cultural resources the social resources should also be protected and this is something that I know is a difficult balance.

Host: Would you like to introduce Dali to others?

​Brian: For me what I believed Dali represents the best of two things in China. The old Dali represents a very open very accomodating culture at the kind of crossroads of South Asia. It's such an interesting and diverse culture but at the same time it represents the new. We have so many creative young people coming here and people coming here hoping to create a new ideas new values, and I believe that in that way the combination of the old and new make Dali such an interesting place to visit. So if I were to say anything about Dali and describe it to future people to come, I would say it would be one of the best places in China to experience both the old and the new, the creative and the experimental. I find it to be incredibly dynamic place.