Coming HOME

Jamie QQ Wu's new house is the setting for a different chapter in her life as a mother and a creative.

- LUO JINGMEI

Siheyuan (Mandarin for ‘quadrangle’) is a traditional courtyard compound in China. Multiple families often live in a compound made up of several courtyards, promoting a communal way of living. Jamie QianQian Wu (Jamie QQ Wu is the colloquial label she goes by) grew up in a siheyuan-style house in Shanghai before urban redevelopment replaced the picturesque, low-level housing fabric with skyscrapers and other metropolitan edifices.

Wu is an entrepreneur, TV producer, fashion stylist and social media influencer who had formerly opened an awardwinning restaurant on the Bund in Shanghai. Since 2020, she has also been an investor and marketing consultant for Altava—which pioneered a 3D fashion gaming app that bridges the physical and digital luxury fashion sphere—and is also a mother to one-yearold Eden and three-year-old Archie. Five years ago, she moved to Singapore with her husband, who came here for his work in real estate.

“In old Shanghai, we lived in a siheyuan-style house occupied by my (paternal) grandfather and his seven siblings, who lived in this extended complex of courtyards with their kids and grandkids. So, growing up, you’re very close to your relatives; there’s little privacy. Everyone knows what you’re doing, even what you’re eating for dinner.

Kids are running around and you could disappear and eat dinner at someone else’s house and your parents had to come and find you,” Wu recollects with palpable relish. “This was the ’80s in China. It was still pretty much underdeveloped but it was such a communal, happy way of living and really taught me the concept of family.”