Palace Museum's pavilion replicated in a courtyard

Photos showing Su Qingwu working on the replica of a pavilion in the Palace Museum. [Photo/Ningbo Evening News]

A video depicting a girl constructing an ancient pavilion in her courtyard recent went viral online.

The video garnered more than three million views and more than 180,000 likes on Bilibili, a video-sharing site in China.

Su Qingwu, who's born in Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, is the girl in the clip. She is currently a photographer after graduating from Zhejiang Wanli University in Ningbo.

Su spent five months and 10,000 yuan ($1,538.5) to complete the pavilion, a replica of a pavilion in the Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City, in Beijing.

Netizens have marveled at her accomplishment, especially since she knew nothing about architecture before she decided to build the pavilion.

The idea of making such a pavilion came to mind when she realized that her courtyard, which was the backdrop for many of her videos, looked a tad monotonous with only a red wall as the background. As such, she decided to build a pavilion from scratch to spruce up the scene 

In April 2020, Su started work on the structure, referring to short videos and books to learn how to construct the pavilion.

During the construction process, the novice builder was confronted by several failures and even suffered a few injuries. On one occasion, she fell from a stool after capping the pavilion with tiles.

Flowers including begonia, peony and wintersweet have also been planted near the building.

Su's success did not come from nowhere. The girl has always showed a strong interest in handicrafts. She once made a sofa with an old wooden door, crafted a fish lamp with bamboo and even attended class with clothes that she made during her third year in college.

Speaking of her future plans, Su revealed that she plans to craft another pavilion that is double the size of the current one.