Short answer – Nicki and I realised that Shensi would be the perfect choice for our new home. It had been (and maybe still is) the name of our home of the past 30 years, so it seemed fitting to ‘take’ it with us.
A little backstory to the actual name though …. when we purchased our home in 1996 we noted from the deeds that it had a property name and although we seldom used the name whilst living there, when our boatbuilder asked what name we wanted for our barge, it seemed an obvious choice – Shensi. Using that name, we felt we could retain a connection between our old family home and our future home.
Deciding on the name however, we realised that we’d never really thought much about it’s origins so now in 2025 we finally asked ourselves the question – why was our home named Shensi?
Sifting through the little information we did have, it transpired that the original owner of our home had at one time been a Baptist minister who, in the mid 1800s was posted to China as a member of a Baptist missionary programme, specifically to Shaanxi, a province in northwest China, where he lived and worked for many, many years until his eventual return to England. On moving Into his final British home it appears he chose to name it Shensi, which is an older, alternative transliteration of the Chinese name Shaanxi. (Shensi and Shaanxi refer to the same geographic location.). Nicki and I like to believe he chose the name Shensi as a bridge to his past life, much as we are now doing.
