At the start of the 21st century, the Shanxi mountain village of Hougou seemed destined to waste away like so many rural hamlets on the mainland. It had few mineral resources to speak of, and farm harvests were usually poor because it lacked other water sources to supplement the region's scant rainfall. Villagers still lived in yaodong, the traditional cave dwellings common in northwest China, and the annual per capita income was just 400 yuan (HK$453). Not surprisingly, many young people, Zhang Zhifang among them, left to find a better life in the cities.
'At that time, our entire family of five earned about 2,000 yuan a year,' recalls Zhang, who went to work in the provincial capital, Taiyuan, eight years ago. 'I made that sum as a waitress in three months.'
Hougou's fortunes have now been revived thanks to a previously untapped resource: its rich cultural heritage. Although some yaodong are little more than hovels, Hougou has some of the mainland's most sophisticated cave dwellings.
'The architecture in this village is unique,' says TV producer Fan Yu, who first visited Hougou in 2004 to make a documentary about its cave dwellings. He was so captivated by Hougou that he spent four years working on a book about the village's cultural heritage, An Ancient Village Sealed Off by the Dust.
Fan says the village is at least 700 years old and its most splendid cave dwellings are the legacy of ancestors who made their fortunes by trading tea, silk and salt, and those who became important officials after passing imperial exams. 'When these wealthy forefathers returned home, they wanted to build grand homes with intricate brickwork and wooden carvings they had seen elsewhere. However, they still had a strong attachment to cave dwellings. The result was a combination of cave dwellings and traditional courtyard houses,' he says.
These affluent ancestors also left other architectural treasures. Besides a number of Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian temples, there is also a shrine honouring the Dragon King, the deity said to control rainfall, and an opera stage decorated with exquisite wooden carving and murals (above right). A cave temple dedicated to the Zhang clan points to the influence of the family, which is said to have first settled in Hougou. More than half of the 250 villagers share the family name.