A Traditional and Featured Living Way - Cave Dwellings

Posted by ugfanfan on September 11th, 2014

Cave dwellings, known as Yaodong in Chinese, means arched tunnels. It has been existed over 200 thousands of years in six provinces in north China, and nowadays, there are still a large number of people live in such ancient and traditional "architecture". Villages on the Loess plateau in Luoyang and Sanmenxia city (130 km to the west of Luoyang, on the Luoyang-Xian railway) have the cave dwellings since ancient times.

The thick Loess in the area is very easy for digging caves. Besides, lacking of tools to build the buildings above the ground in the ancient times, the locals dug caves for themselves. Subsequently, the tradition of digging and living in caves was passed down over generations.

Firstly, the locals select a good place, and dig a pit of around 100 square meters.

Secondly, they dig caves on the four sides and a tunnel leading to the surface on one of the sides. Lastly, a well is dug at the center of the pit. So this ancient architecture features cool in summer and warm in winter.

As a unique residential architecture on the Loess plateau, it is widely used and scattered everywhere outside the cities in this region.

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