Day 1 Yuanjia Village, Cave House Dwelling

09:00: Your personal guide will hold a welcome board with your name on and wait for you at your hotel lobby. You will set out to enjoy this discovery tour.

10:20 - 15:00: The priority for this tour is Yuanjia Village. Driving for over an hour, you will see this original rural countryside with the zigzagging and rolling Jiuzong Mountain towering in the north. Entering the village, the first scene comes to your eye is a large orchard planted with apple trees, pear trees, grape trellis, etc.. Furthering on, a broad path will turn up and lead you to the core of the village. Leading by the elegant alleys made of blue stones, you will pass the rows of local family houses and find yourselves inside of a area with stores and workshops standing on both sides selling daily necessities like edible oil, Fermented Glutinous Rice Soup, Tofu, cayenne pepper, flour etc., locally-produced yogurt, different kinds of noodles and local specialties. There are all together about 300 snack bars and restaurants here, presenting all kinds of Northwestern China food culture. Some of them still preserved the traditional culinary methods and the vegetables and ingredients all come from local greenhouses. You are recommended to try some. If you got lucky, you may encounter some big events and a real feast of drum performance, folk dance and Qin opera show will be on display. When you stand in a certain point, you may still see a few old houses that stand awkwardly afar, with yellow smoke curling up from the kitchen chimneys, roosters crowing, dogs barking and children playing outside. This is the real countryside life. Everything is just so quiet and so natural.

15:30 - 16:30: Your next stop is Local Cave House Dwelling. Cave dwelling has existed in China for over 4000 years. However, it was in Han Dynasty when this dwelling form become popular and widely used. With the improvement of techniques, cave house has been modernized nowadays, but we can still see what it look like in old times. There are several cave houses left nearby the Yuanjia Village, one of which will be today’s visiting objective. You will see a big yard with rectangular walls surrounded. Inside of the yard are a row of concrete houses in one side, and on the other side, the cave houses. Most cave houses here are carved out of a hillside or excavated horizontally from a sunken courtyard. There is a big window beside the door to allow as much as light to come through. Entering the house, you will see a big “bed” aside or deep inside. This is a special bed named “Kang” in local dialect. It’s made of mud and bricks. People use bricks to build a rectangular wall and covers it with flat stone slabs. In Winter, people just burn the dry straws and corn stalks inside and the “Kang” will be warm. Another amazing fact is that cave house is quite cool in Summer, and there is little heating required in Winter. This is probably why many people choose to stay at cave house.




17:30: This day trip will come to an end and you will be dropped off at hotel for rest.