张福运故居, Cultural heritage residence in Tianjin, China.
The Zhang Fuyun Residence is a two-storey Western-style villa completed in 1935 at 2 Changde Road, with a floor area of 1,238.27 square metres on a 4,336.80-square-metre plot. Its red-brick facade has open galleries on both sides of the south front and a terrace between them, under a hipped tiled roof carried on projecting beams. The entrance porch has a coloured marble floor, two fair-faced concrete columns and a comb-shaped arched ceiling.
Zhang Fuyun bought the 6.457-mu plot from the Xiannong Company in November 1932 under the name Qianjing Hall and had the villa built by the Leli Engineering Office; it was finished in 1935. During the Japanese occupation the house was occupied by Japanese residents, and in 1946 ownership passed to Zhang's wife Li Guoqin, granddaughter of Li Hongzhang. In 1947 the deed was transferred to his friend Lin Honglai, who never lived there, and from 1952 the municipal housing authority managed the property.
The villa now houses the Maxim's French restaurant, not a museum. Its name recalls Zhang Fuyun, customs chief under the Republic, though locals long attributed the house to T. V. Soong or H. H. Kung. The building is listed as Lin Honglai's former residence, after the friend who held its deed but never lived there.
The building at No. 2 Changde Road now operates as Maxim's, a French restaurant, so visits are tied to dining rather than museum tours. It stands within the Five Avenues area of Heping District, and the 1935 villa is best viewed from the street or over a meal.
Zhang Fuyun never lived in the house built for him: from its completion in 1935 until 1949 he neither resided there nor appeared there, according to the source. Local lore therefore holds that the villa was really a private residence of T. V. Soong or H. H. Kung, lent Zhang's name, with Kung considered the likelier of the two given his Tianjin ties.
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