Saturday 5 November 2016

Ancient houses on cliff wall

These cliff wall houses in Beijing's outskirts, have complex structure and ingenious design. It’s said  to be excavated by a tribe during 581 AD to 907 AD, in a quiet valley less than 10 meters wide, nearly 100 thousand square meters of steep cliff wall are covered with various sizes of 117 cave rooms. As a result, tourists keep coming.
These cliff wall houses or cave houses are connected with each other through stone steps and stone ladders, very orderly.  Each cave house is about 1.8 meters high, most has three bedrooms, but only 1 bedroom has windows.  The biggest cave room is about 20 square meters, whereas the smallest about  4 square meters, equipped with stone beds, stoves and closets and so on. Different cave rooms have different functions, with a stone bed are for people, with a manger are for horse...
Besides one cliff wall house similar to ancient palace, has 4 stone pillars supporting the roof, and 2 small bedrooms on both sides, not only very tall and spacious, but owns excellent indoor lighting and fine carving...  why did ancient Chinese live in a steep cliff wall? because no definite historical records, it's still a mystery!

The pictures are from here.