Ordos

Cave houses dug by Chinese settlers

Editorial contextCaught in a freezing storm in the Ordos, the priests found a ravine lined with man-made caves, neatly plastered, with windows, stoves and heated beds (kang). Huc explains that Chinese settlers in Tartary dig such homes into hard hillsides. A Mongol sheltering in the next cave told them he had known the Chinese families who dug them, and that the local Mongols had driven them out two years before for encroaching and stealing.

not simple caves formed by nature, but fine, spacious apartments excavated by the hand of man. … When the Chinese establish themselves anywhere in Tartary, if they find mountains, the earth of which is hard and solid, they excavate caverns in their sides. These habitations are cheaper than houses, and less exposed to the irregularity of the seasons.

About Chinese settlers (Kitat) and Ordos Mongols