Old houses and classic Chinese furniture get a new lease on life as an eager collector is turning his passion into luxury resorts, Xu Junqian reports in Shanghai.

It's sheer understatement to say Qin Tongqian is a collector of century-old houses.

What the 50-year-old businessman has been collecting for more than half of his life bears an uncanny resemblance to Lego, the twice-named "toy of the century", except that the world of his collections is a real one.