Guyaju Cave

The caves homes of Guyaju (Guyaju meaning, ancient cliff dwelling) are about 90km northwest of Beijing, China.  the house was hewn from the craggy cliffs overlooking Zhangshanying Town, Yanqing County. The intriguing house complex has more than 110 stone rooms, and is the largest cliff residence ever discovered in China.The Ancient Cliff House (Guyaju), was a significant discovery relating to the study of ancient Chinese people who inhabited the north of the country. However, no precise record of it has ever been found, so no one knows its exact origins.

On each side of the precipitous cliffs, adjacent stone houses, rectangular and square, large and small, were built.The cave part of the homes vary in size from a tiny 4m² to a still small 20m² (43-215 ft²). Some homes are connected perpendicularly while others connect horizontally with narrow corridors and stone ladders. Stone steps, and stone ladders are used to connect the storeys of an entire cliff house. Stone lamp-stands, stone hearths, closets, and mangers in the caves, the windows and gates all remain as traces of their mysterious ancient inhabitants.

The most fascinating one is a 2-storey stone house, with six finely engraved stone pillars propping it up. Within the house, there is a wing containing a small room with a stone table, stone stools, and a broad stone bed. This ingeniously constructed stone room is at the highest spot of the cliff house, and is thought to be the residence of a chief of the day. Standing on its upper floor, tourists can see a superb panorama of the nearby areas.

These weren’t primitive homes. Some show the remains of heated living rooms and beds known as kang, a central heating system that dates back in China and Korea as far as 5,000 BC. Millions of people still live happily in cave homes all over the world.