The long-vacant ancestral home of Maria Lee Tseng Chiu-kwan, Hong Kong's "Queen of Cakes", reopened to visitors as a wood-fired bakery last month in Guhe village of Sanxiang town, Zhongshan.

In the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, Guhe native Tseng Cheuk-hin once lived in Japan for some time and later settled in Shanghai. He was long remembered in his hometown as a philanthropist. In 1922, he donated 12,700 silver dollars to renovate the flagstone street in Guhe — the same gray stone path that visitors now stop to photograph.

His granddaughter Maria Lee was born in Shanghai in 1929. In 1958, she founded "Maria's Culinary Arts School" in Hong Kong. Maria's Bakery, known for its cakes and pastries, grew out of that venture and expanded into a multinational enterprise, earning her the title Hong Kong's "Queen of Cakes".

Maria Lee was devoted to her hometown, funding the Guhe Welfare Foundation to support local public welfare causes and paying for a pavilion beside the ancestral home. Maria's Bakery outlets also appeared in Zhongshan in the 1990s.

Her ancestral home, built in the Qing Dynasty, is more than a century old. It was later donated to the village and once served as a senior activity center, a clinic, and a community activity room — a shared memory for generations of villagers.