Comfortable Cave houses with courtyard in West Henan

The Yellow River turns east at the boundary of Shaanxi and Shanxi, then, running past the famous Sanmenxia City, flows across Henan Province. West Henan mainly refers to the area around Sanmenxia. In the suburb of Lingbao county, Sanmenxia, there is a kind of special dwelling with a long history.

Locals say that the advantages of cave house are not only being economic but also being suitable for living – warm in winter and cool in summer because it is built under the ground. Nowadays people have made progress in making cave houses. Some build the ceiling by laying bricks or cement, while others build the walls by laying bricks, so that the cave houses could be solider, safer and better-looking.

The most distinctive feature of the cave houses is the courtyard. Locals dig a deep square pit, then excavate several cave houses on the walls of the pit, after which they will build a slope channel at one corner of the courtyard (i.e., the pit) leading to the ground as the gate. In the courtyard, they also dig a very deep well to gather rainwater. Cave houses with courtyard are the living example for researching the evolution of “cave dwelling” of primitive human beings and a spectacle for learning more about the local customs of villages on the loess plateau.