Miaoshang Village Pit Dwelling Courtyards

Miaoshang Village Pit Dwelling Courtyards

Miaoshang Village Pit Dwelling Courtyards These dwellings are recognized as a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

Miaoshang Village Pit Dwelling Courtyards

The local pit dwellings (also called courtyard pits) in Sanmenxia, Henan Province, are a common form of vernacular architecture in China’s loess hilly regions, with a history of 4,000 years. As a “miracle of folk architecture” and the “underground courtyard” of northern China, the Sanmenxia pit dwellings have been listed as a cultural relic protection unit of Henan Province. Today, there are still over 100 underground villages and nearly 10,000 pit dwellings in Sanmenxia, Henan. Nowadays, these pit dwellings mostly serve as historical remnants of folk culture, preserved alongside many other local customs, attracting visitors from all over.

In western Henan, there is a folk phenomenon known to both domestic and international tourists as an “architectural miracle”—the pit dwellings, also referred to as courtyard pits, where “you see trees but not the village, you see the village but not the houses, and you hear voices but not the people.” Many tourists from home and abroad are amazed by this unique folk architectural and cultural tradition along the banks of the Yellow River.

The pit dwellings have deep roots in the cave-dwelling traditions of early ancestors. With a history of about 4,000 years, they were once a common form of housing in China’s loess hilly areas, especially concentrated in western Henan, southern Shanxi, northern Weinan, and eastern Gansu. Over time, the number of people living in these “cave” pit dwellings has dwindled, and many abandoned courtyards have been filled in or collapsed, making their former appearance hard to find. However, in the Sanmenxia area, pit dwellings can still be found scattered across many parts of the loess hilly regions. Particularly on the three loess plateaus—Dongfan Plateau, Zhangcun Plateau, and Zhangbian Plateau—in the eastern part of Sanmenxia, there are dozens of large and small underground villages, with several households still living in pit dwellings.

As the name suggests, a pit dwelling is created by digging a square or rectangular pit, 10 to 12 meters on each side and about 6–7 meters deep, into flat loess land. Then, 8 to 12 cave rooms are dug into the four walls of the pit. A sloped tunnel is dug from one of the cave rooms in a corner of the courtyard up to the ground, serving as the entrance. The cave room directly opposite the entrance is the main room, traditionally occupied by the elders. The rooms on the sides are secondary caves, used for different purposes such as the kitchen, animal stalls, toilet, and entrance corridor. Depending on the orientation of the main room—east, west, south, or north—the dwellings are respectively called “East Shock Dwelling,” “West Lake Dwelling,” “South Fire Dwelling,” and “North Water Dwelling.”

Most of the caves have a heated kang bed made of adobe bricks, used for sleeping and warming during winter meals. Every pit courtyard has tung trees and pear trees planted in it, and many also have flowers that bloom in spring, summer, and autumn, creating a tranquil rural atmosphere. There is also a soakaway pit about 6 meters deep, mainly used to collect rainwater. Some pit courtyards are surrounded by a 30 to 40 cm high parapet wall (also called a parapet or railing), which serves to prevent rainwater from flooding the courtyard, ensures the safety of children and nighttime travelers, and adds a decorative touch. During busy farming seasons, the top of the pit can also serve as a drying ground for grain. Small holes with a diameter of about 15 cm are opened in the roof of the kitchen cave, allowing sun-dried grain to be directly poured into the cave, saving labor.

The pit dwellings are called an “architectural miracle” by tourists from home and abroad and are known as the “underground courtyard” of northern China. In the early 20th century, the book *Architecture Without Architects* by the German architect Rudofsky was the first to introduce China’s cave dwellings to the world, describing this type of architecture as “bold creativity, refined technique, abstract language, and rigorous form.”

Since the 1980s, as farmers’ economic conditions improved, people who originally lived in pit dwellings gradually began building houses and apartment buildings above ground. By the mid-1990s, due to the large amount of land occupied by pit dwellings, many villages started to fill them in under the policy of “returning housing land to farmland,” leading to a rapid decline in the number of pit dwellings.

Further Reading:

· Fourth Batch of Henan Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Units

· Seventh Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units