Old Stories of Fengyuan Part Three, Fengyuan Cave Dwelling

When it comes to cave dwellings, people will naturally think of them as representative symbols of people’s living styles in northern Shaanxi and northern Shanxi. In fact, the cave dwellings on Fengyuan may be more ancient and natural.

Especially in the Ming kiln beside Fengyuan ditch, the villagers will live in it for three to five years with a little tidying up due to difficulties in living. The traces of smoke and fire in the cave dwellings It is no longer possible to know how many hundreds of years and how many generations it has been used as a place of residence.

Nowadays, people’s impression of the Guanzhong Diyao is just a superficial impression of “seeing the village but not the people”, so naturally they don’t know much about its origins and characteristics.

Most of the underground kilns in Fengyuan are flat kilns, which are cave dwellings dug out of the flat ground, which are close to the underground kilns in the Henan plains. A small number of Ming kilns were built along the ditch banks and plateau banks. The difference between the two is that the Ming Dynasty kilns are older. Even the old people can't tell what era they were built. They are surrounded by ditches and hills. The terrain is dangerous and inconvenient. The soil is also very hard, represented by Liaojiang stone. Therefore, it can survive for hundreds of years. Most of the flat kilns were built during the period of population growth before and after liberation in the last century. There are three or five families gathered together, which is more in number. They are also the mainstream of underground kilns in Fengyuan. The existing Zhangjiayao underground kiln on Fengyuan is the representative of the newly built Ming kiln, while the Baishe underground kiln is the representative of the flat kiln (also called dark kiln). The remaining underground kilns have basically disappeared after the construction of new rural areas. Only the Ming kiln on the ditch side that has lasted for hundreds of years has neither been inhabited nor has any use value. It still stands in the wind and rain.

Ping kiln is commonly known as Zhuangzi in the local area and is divided into four-head, six-head and eight-head specifications. If the number of heads is an even number, it may also have auspicious and peaceful connotations. The number of heads refers to the number of cave dwellings on the four walls of the flat kiln. Xiao Zhuangzi mostly has four heads. The number of Zhuangzi's heads means the size of Zhuangzi's yard, which is often related to the wealth of the family living there. Zhuangzi, who had eight heads, had been the standard choice for a wife for his son for a long time.

There is a lot to pay attention to when building a flat kiln. You have to go through the process of visiting the village, digging the village, building cave dwellings, washing the walls, building alleyways, mud kilns, drying the village, digging tunnels and the final rainproof reinforcement before you can move in. It is all done by manpower, carried by hand and shoulder, the amount of work is huge, and it is also our own. All major matters in the village depend on the help of neighbors. A village does not build two flat kilns at the same time every year, which is also related to the large amount of earthwork excavated and moved.

Reading Zhuangzi is similar to reading Feng Shui. Some people use compasses and some don’t, but the north-south orientation is a must. Just like when people die in old age, it is an eternal law that they must rest their heads on Yetai Mountain and step on the Weihe River beach. Therefore, most of the entrances to Zhuangzi are in the southeast direction. The focus of Zhuangzi is more on the judgment and prediction of terrain height and hard soil. Soil that is too soft is easy to collapse, and soil that is too hard, such as ancient Ming kiln material and stone, should be avoided. Too difficult to dig, it is easy to give up halfway.

Excavation of Zhuangzi and cave dwellings are both manual jobs. They require strong laborers to avoid the continuous rainy season of September and October. There is no time in the year that cannot be avoided. Wall washing and kiln opening are both technical ways to survive, and there are only one or two clever people who can be recognized as masters. To wash the wall, use a flat-mouthed prod from top to bottom to make the entire excavated wall smoother and more upright. The traces of washing are neat and tidy, which will present an artistic atmosphere that is no less than that of oil paintings. The flat wall can ensure that rainwater will not wet the wall and fall off as much as possible. Wall washing is the finishing touch after excavation. When wall washing begins, the people responsible for the excavation are free and will all watch and comment. This also makes wall washers dare not be negligent in the slightest. They have seen and spoken more, and the art of wall washing has been passed down from generation to generation unknowingly.

Generally speaking, the person who washes the wall is also the one who opens the kiln entrance, and the kiln entrance must be upright and upright. Especially for the semi-circular arc above the cave, the person who opened the kiln opening does not need other measuring tools. He relies on experience and feeling. Make sure the kiln opening is the right size, beautiful and round, and it will also win a lot of praise. .

Outsiders have never understood how the people living in the underground kiln got in and out of the underground kiln. During the period when the educated youth went to the countryside, an educated youth stood on the back of the kiln and borrowed the stairs from the villagers. The villagers were stunned for a while. I don't know what happened, and I'm confused. In the end, I found out that he wanted to borrow the cave dwelling under the stairs, which caused several village jokes. People who live in Pingyao have special passages to enter and exit. Generally, the exit is in the south, also called a lane. The door usually refers to the exit of the lane.

After each cave dwelling is excavated, it must pass through a mud wall, which is made of wheat straw and red soil mixed into mud, and the cave wall is reinforced with a layer, which is called locally: wrapped mud. In this way, fine dust will not fall down inside the cave dwelling after being wrapped in mud. After installing the doors, windows and the Kang board, it's time to move to a new home.

People who have never lived in Pingyao are most worried about safety and ventilation. Needless to say, safety is not a concern. For decades, we have not heard of anyone’s cave house collapsing. As long as the cave house is uninhabited, it will collapse very quickly. Many people don’t understand how the underground kiln is breathable? On the roof of the innermost cave of each cave dwelling, most people use a Luoyang shovel to dig out a slide hole with a diameter of ten to twenty centimeters, and cover it with one and a half bricks and tiles to solve the problem of rain protection. Sometimes, this slide hole can also be used as a special passage for passing small items and a passage for grain storage.

Before liberation, a hidden kiln, also called a high kiln, would be dug directly above the cave entrance to prevent bandits. If a robber or thief comes, the whole family should take their valuables and hide in a dark kiln along the stairs. After removing the stairs, the thief's path will be cut off. This can ensure the safety of the family, which is also quite popular wisdom. At the same time, the lanes in Zhuangzi were also deliberately dug into zigzag lines to prevent bandits from using poison or stone rollers to roll down the slope to open the gate.

Fengyuan flat kiln is no longer common. For hundreds of years, the living style of imitating nature, warm in winter and cool in summer, with its own local style has been successively replaced by half-built xiazifang and new rural houses. replace.

After browsing the Baishe Ancient Di Kiln Village and the Ming Kiln Folk Houses in Zhangjiayao, we can only get a glimpse of the folk houses in Guanzhong. The history and culture hidden behind the underground kilns will become increasingly rare and precious as each generation ages.