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West China

Feature: A tale of cave dwelling

2019-05-09 09:19:54

by Xinhua Writers Cao Bin, Qiang Lijing and Li Hua

XI'AN, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Yin Zhijun, a farmer from Yan'an, a former revolutionary base of the Communist Party of China (CPC), moved into the "house caves" he dug with his newly-wed wife 30 years ago.

Today, his 25-year-old son said he will continue to live in the caves after he gets married.

House cave, or "yaodong," is a form of earth shelter dwellings common in the Loess Plateau in northern China. Over half of the more than 1.5 million rural population in Yan'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, are still living in the traditional dwellings.

Taking the advantages of thick loess layers and favorable landforms, the sturdy and durable yaodongs are mostly carved out of hillsides. They do not take up valuable arable land and are warm in winter and cool in summer.

American journalist Edgar Snow once interviewed Mao Zedong in one of the cave dwellings in Yan'an and penned the classic book "Red Star Over China," which gave a rare, detailed and brilliant account of the Chinese revolution in the 1930s.

Yin, 52, has been living in the cave dwelling in Kangping Village, Fengzhuang Township in Yan'an's Baota District all his life. He was born and raised in a primitive earthy cave, which was humid and would easily tumble down in downpours.

When Yin turned 15, his family moved into a new cave half-built by stones from nearby areas. Due to the lack of road access, the transportation expenses were usually higher than the stones.

Years later, he became a coal miner, earning 9 yuan (1.3 U.S. dollars) a day, which was much more than a farmer would earn from the field.

In 1990, he saved up nearly 9,000 yuan and was able to build four stone caves before getting married.

"A man can be called a grown-up only after he builds a yaodong of his own and has a family," he said.

Today's cave dwellings are quite different from what Edgar Snow had described. In "Red Star Over China," he depicted a Red Army university that "was probably the world's only seat of 'higher learning' whose classrooms were bombproof caves, with chairs and desks of stone and brick, and blackboards and walls of limestone and clay."

Tap water flowed into Yin Zhijun's village in 1995, and natural gas came shortly after. Higher quality moisture-resistant materials, modern furniture, electric appliances and spacious rooms with plenty of daylight, as well as improvements in the natural environment brought by afforestation, make Yin increasingly inseparable from his caves.

He said that when he occasionally stayed in storied buildings it was "like suffering."

Statistics show that over the past decade, over half of the 1.5 million rural residents in Yan'an have moved into new house caves built with stones.

Last year, Yin renovated two of the idle caves and rented them out, earning him an additional 700 yuan a month.

In the meantime, with the help of a tourism development company, idle caves in the village have been collected for unified management. Distinctive cave hotels offer a unique experience for tourists eager to have a taste of the traditional dwelling and reminiscence in the CPC history.

Ma Hairong, Party chief of Kangping Village, said 45 house caves in the village are being operated as cave hotels at present while another 25 are under decoration for future operation.

The renovated house caves have preserved the traditional heatable adobe bed, while adding some modern hotel facilities such as wireless Internet access and cable TV, according to Ma.

"The cave hotels in our village are so popular that customers always complain that it is difficult to book a room during the holidays," Ma said.

Instead of plowing in the field, 20 more villagers have become service providers taking on jobs such as tour guides and housekeepers.

Yin and his wife have been running a greenhouse for a decade. Before the highway opened, the couple had to carry melons they had grown to the market about 20 km away in the city center for sale.

After a new expressway was built in recent years, he can sell out of all the melons on the roadside of his own village. Now, Yin's family has an annual income of 100,000 yuan a year.

Apart from running the melon stall, Yin's wife has also found a job as a cleaner in the cave hotels, which can bring her a monthly income of 2,600 yuan.

Last year, Yin bought his son a car for 150,000 yuan. He said his son can choose to either buy an apartment in the city after marriage or to come back to live with him in the house cave with a spacious courtyard.

Though Hao Shenglan moved into her new house cave years ago, she goes back to visit her old loess cave dwellings in the village.

"Those old cave dwellings have been well preserved," the 72-year-old said.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Kangping Village received 14 "educated youths" -- the estimated 12 to 18 million young urbanites sent to remote rural areas to "learn from farmers" during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). They stayed in Hao's old house caves, which have been restored to its original status and opened to tourists as the former residence of the "educated youths."

The furnishings in the old cave dwellings are kept as in the old days: an adobe bed, several wooden boxes, a water vat and a kerosene lamp. "Life was hard then. All the five or six lads were crammed into the same bed," she said.

Now, Hao has a new job -- a cleaner and maintainer of the residence of the "educated youths." She earns 600 yuan per month.

Ma Hairong said although many Yan'an people have moved into highrises, they are still willing to stay in the traditional cave dwellings during holidays to recall old memories and enjoy the peaceful rural life.

"For Yan'an people, yaodong means home forever," Ma said.

At present, with its rich revolutionary relics and short distance to the China Executive Leadership Academy (Yan'an) and Yan'an University, Kangping Village has become a red education and training base and an outdoor teambuilding training base, further boosting its rural tourism industry.

Last year, Kangping Village, home to some 300 people, received 32,000 tourists and earned 1.2 million yuan. Some foreign tourists also came to experience the cave dwellings, Ma said. (Xinhua reporter Liu Tong also contributed to the story.)

Editor:Jiang Yiwei