Thirty million Chinese people live in cave dwellings

Beijing - Like many other farmers from the area around the Chinese city of Yan'an, Ren Shouhua was born in a cave dwelling and lived in it until he found work in the city and moved to an apartment building. This step was in line with the villager's effort to improve his living standards. However, the 46-year-old Ren surprisingly wants to return to the cave for retirement, writes the Los Angeles Times.
     "In summer, it's pleasantly cool in the cave, and in winter, it's warm again. And there is also silence and safety there," explains the graying Ren, who moved to Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, as a young man. "When I get older, I would like to return to my roots," he adds.
     More than 30 million Chinese currently live in cave dwellings. Many of them inhabit Shaanxi province, where the local plateau with its characteristic yellow loess deposits allows for easy digging of caves.
     Each cave dwelling in this province consists of a long arched room carved into the mountainside. A semicircular entrance typically covered with rice paper or colorful blankets leads inside. The walls are decorated with pictures, such as portraits of communist leader Mao Zedong or photographs of movie stars from magazines.
     More luxurious cave dwellings protrude from the mountainside and are reinforced with bricks. Some are interconnected, allowing a family to occupy multiple rooms. Established electricity and water are not uncommon.
     "Most are not that fancy, but some caves are really beautiful; they have high ceilings, are spacious, and have a little garden in front where one can sit in the sun," describes Ren, who works as a driver and whose father makes a living growing wheat and millet.
     Caves have played a prominent role in Chinese history. The famous Long March of the Red Army of the Communist Party of China in the 1930s ended near Yan'an, where Mao sought refuge in local caves. In the novel Red Star Over China, American writer Edgar Snow described a university of the Red Army that "was probably the only institution of higher learning in the world whose classrooms were bomb-proof caves, with stone and brick benches and limestone and clay blackboards and walls."
     Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to replace current President Hu Jintao next year, lived in a cave for seven years when he was sent into exile in Shaanxi province during the Cultural Revolution.
     "Cave dwellings are one of the earliest expressions of construction; we know of caves in France and Spain, and people still live in caves in India," stated David Wang, a professor of architecture at Washington State University in Spokane. "But in China, we have a unique case, a history of this type of housing spanning two millennia," he added.
     In recent years, architects have praised caves as a form of ecological housing. "They save energy. Farmers can also gain additional arable land for growing crops if they build their houses on the slope. And construction doesn't cost as much and doesn't require such skills," declared Liu Jiaping of the Xi'an Research Center for Ecological Architecture and reportedly one of the leading experts on cave dwellings. "However, they don't fit very well with a complicated modern lifestyle. People long for a refrigerator, a washing machine, a television," he added.
     Liu helped design and build modern versions of traditional cave dwellings, and in 2006 he reached the finals of the World Habitat Award, sponsored by a British foundation dedicated to ecological housing. His modern cave dwellings are two stories and have openings above the entrance to improve lighting and ventilation. The family has access to four rooms, two on each floor.
     "It's the same as living in a villa. Caves in our villages are just as comfortable as elegant apartments in the city," says Cheng Wei, a 43-year-old Communist Party official living in one of these cave houses in the village of Cao-yuan on the outskirts of Yan'an. "Many people here want to rent our caves; no one wants to move out," he adds.
     A cave with three rooms and a bathroom (totaling 70 square meters) on the outskirts of Yan'an is being advertised for sale for $46,000 (856,000 crowns). A simple one-room cave without sewage can be rented for $30 a month (about 560 crowns).
     However, most caves are neither for sale nor for rent, as they are passed down from generation to generation. Seventy-six-year-old Ma Liang-shuei lives in a one-room cave on the main road south of Yan'an. It's not luxurious, but he does have electricity - a bare bulb hangs from the ceiling.
     The cave is oriented to the west, allowing its occupant to bask in the late afternoon sun if he pulls aside the blue and white blanket hanging next to the drying red peppers at the entrance.
     Ma says that his son and daughter-in-law have moved to the city, but he does not want to leave. "Life here is simple and comfortable. I don't have to climb anywhere up stairs, and I have everything I need. I've lived in a cave my entire life, and I can't imagine anything else," he insists.