Treehouse in Kamtin

Brief information

The old banyan in Kamtin is notable not only for its size: its roots and trunks have effectively dismantled a stone structure and taken its place. The small-leaved ficus here has grown to a trunk about 6 meters in diameter, a height of about 16.5 meters, and a crown up to 42 meters wide. But the main thing is visible not in the numbers, but in the interlocking of tree and ruin: only a few brick walls and a doorway remain of the building, while the tree wraps around them like a frame that it itself gradually destroyed.

The meaning of the place changes if one remembers the reason for its abandonment. According to the original description, the owners left the structure during the Great Clearance at the beginning of the Qing era, after which the building stood empty. The banyan grew nearby, its aerial roots found gaps between the bricks, increased the pressure on the masonry, and over time swallowed the structure. Therefore, this is not simply a tree by ruins, but a ruin whose form has partly passed into the tree.

What to notice first

It is worth comparing three material details: the brick, the opening, and the shape of the trunks. The stone structure was built of blue brick and consisted of two buildings with three rooms; now only fragments of walls and one doorway are mentioned as remaining from it. These remnants explain why the tree does not look like a freely growing banyan, but like a plant that worked for a long time with pre-existing corners and cracks.

It is also worth noticing the straight sides and rectangular bends of the old trunks. In the original text, they are explained by the fact that the branches and aerial roots first wrapped around the structure, then enclosed its bricks. Therefore, in the wood one can look not for a random quirk of growth, but for the imprint of a disappearing building. The woven Chinese door frame is already described as something that was once clearly visible, while the door and window openings, without restoration, collapsed outward: even the losses here help one understand how fragile this union of tree and masonry is.