A Cave With A View ('Life is easy and comfortable here")

Someare basic, others beautiful, with high ceilings and nice yards. 'Life is easyand comfortable here,' one cave dweller says.

ByBarbara Demick, Los Angeles Times
March18, 2012
Reportingfrom Yanan, China— 



Like many peasants fromthe outskirts of Yanan, China, Ren Shouhuawas born in a cave and lived there until he got a job in the city and movedinto a concrete-block house.

   His progression made sense as he strove to improve his life. Butthere's a twist: The 46-year-old Ren plans to move back to a cave when heretires.
  "It's cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It's quiet andsafe," said Ren, a ruddy-faced man with salt-and-pepper hair who moved tothe Shaanxi provincial capital, Xian, in his 20s. "When I get old, I'dlike to go back to my roots."

Cave dwelling entrance




More than 30 million Chinese people live in caves, many of themin Shaanxi province where the Loess plateau, with its distinctive cliffs ofyellow, porous soil, makes digging easy and cave dwelling a reasonable option.

   Each of the province's caves, yaodong, in Chinese,typically has a long vaulted room dug into the side of a mountain with asemicircular entrance covered with rice paper or colorful quilts. People hangdecorations on the walls, often a portrait of Mao Tse-tung or a photograph of amovie star torn out of a glossy magazine.

Ma Liangshui, 76, haslived in caves around Yanan his entire life. (Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times/ February 1, 2012)




The better caves protrude from the mountain and are reinforcedwith brick masonry. Some are connected laterally so a family can have severalchambers. Electricity and even running water can be brought in.

    "Most aren't so fancy, but I've seen some really beautiful caves:high ceilings and spacious with a nice yard out front where you can exerciseand sit in the sun," said Ren, who works as a driver and is the son of awheat and millet farmer.

    The caves have an important role in modern Chinese history. TheLong March, the famous retreat of the Communist Partyin the 1930s, ended near Yanan, where Mao took refuge in caves. In "RedStar Over China," writer Edgar Snow described a Red Army university that"was probably the world's only seat of 'higher learning' whose classroomswere bombproof caves, with chairs and desks of stone and brick, and blackboardsand walls of limestone and clay."

 
Cave school



Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who isexpected to succeed Hu Jintao next year aspresident, lived for seven years in a cave when he was exiled to Shaanxiprovince during the Cultural Revolution.

    "The cave topology is one of the earliest human architecturalforms; there are caves in France, in Spain, people still living in caves inIndia," said David Wang, an architecture professor at Washington StateUniversity in Spokane who has written widely on the subject. "What isunique to China is the ongoing history it has had over two millenniums."

Sometimes called thebiggest maze of China, Guyaju is an ancient cave house located about 92kilometers (57 miles) from Beijing. No precise record of it has ever beenfound, so no one knows its exact origins. The house was hewn from the craggycliffs overlooking Zhangshanying Town. The intriguing house complex has morethan 110 stone rooms, and is the largest cave dwelling ever discovered inChina.




In recent years,architects have been reappraising the cave in environmental terms, and theylike what they see.

    "It is energy efficient. The farmers can save their arable landfor planting if they build their houses in the slope. It doesn't take muchmoney or skill to build," said Liu Jiaping, director of the GreenArchitecture Research Center in Xian and perhaps the leading expert on caveliving. "Then again, it doesn't suit modern complicated lifestyles verywell. People want to have a fridge, washing machine, television."

       Liu helped design and develop a modernized version of traditionalcave dwellings that in 2006 was a finalist for a World Habitat Award, sponsoredby a British foundation dedicated to sustainable housing. The updated cavedwellings are built against the cliff in two levels, with openings over thearchways for light and ventilation. Each family has four chambers, two on eachlevel.

Cave dwelling interior




"It's like living in avilla. Caves in our villages are as comfortable as posh apartments in thecity," said Cheng Wei, 43, a Communist Party official who lives in one ofthe cave houses in Zaoyuan village on the outskirts of Yanan. "A lot ofpeople come here looking to rent our caves, but nobody wants to move out."

    The thriving market around Yanan means a cave with three roomsand a bathroom (a total of 750 square feet) can be advertised for sale at$46,000. A simple one-room cave without plumbing rents for $30 a month, withsome people relying on outhouses or potties that they empty outside.

  Manycaves, however, are not for sale or rent because they are handed down from onegeneration to another, though for just how many generations, people often can'tsay.



 

Cave decorated for awedding, Hubei province 



Ma Liangshui, 76, livesin a one-room cave on a main road south of Yanan. It is nothing fancy, butthere is electricity — a bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. He sleeps on a kang,a traditional bed that is basically an earthen ledge, with a fire underneaththat is also used for cooking. His daughter-in-law has tacked up photographs ofFan Bingbing, a popular actress.

    The cave faces west, which makes it easy to bask in the lateafternoon sun by pulling aside the blue-and-white patchwork quilt that hangsnext to drying red peppers in the arched entrance.

    Ma said his son and daughter-in-law have moved to the city, buthe doesn't want to leave.

    "Life is easy and comfortable here. I don't need to climb stairs.I have everything I need," he said. "I've lived all my life in caves,and I can't imagine anything different."

Fan Bingbing




NOTE: 


Having just reviewed Jane’s “A RoomWith A View” essay with this  fascinatingLA Times article fresh in my mind, Ithink I might be happy and content in a “cave with a view.”  

We used to stay at a hotel (our favorite place in the world)called Twin Dolphin in LosCabos where the accommodations were verypleasantly cave-like.  The walls of the varioushotel buildings were even festooned with  replicas of ancientindigenous Baja Sur paintings, nicely driving the chthonic feeling home.  


Although it was eventually overtaken in the LosCabos fashionability  stakes by less distinctive, but grandly luxurious competitor hotels (there are people who like to say they love Mexico, but they really do not), duringthe years we visited there, spelunking in and around Twin Dolphin was The Answer To Everything.  




The Answer ToEverything: Del Shannon (wr: Hilliard - Bachrach, 1961)(link)