Characteristics of Wood Structure Houses in Hemu Village

The wooden houses in Hemu Village are very distinctive: the villagers dig trenches at both ends of the wood, which are interlocking and built one by one, and the roof generally adopts a herringbone slope roof. The doors of every house are open to the east, and white cloth is needed to build new houses on the beams. Locals say it means praying. In their house made of pine, every joint of wood gap should be filled with a kind of grass called "Nuke". This kind of grass absorbs water and expands to fill the gap, and the wall will become airtight, so that it can keep out the cold. They don't cut down living trees.

This ancient village shows its symbolic kingdom in silence. The wooden houses of Tuwa people are square and golden in the sunset, and the whole village looks angular. The winding wooden fences are all pine trees. After a long time, they become warm golden yellow and have a maze-like style. The grass is growing, and the summer scenery is pouring into sleep.

Wood is thick and straight Korean pine, which is cut, cut and sawed into beams, columns and purlins with sharp metal instruments. The components of the whole house are placed on the open space, with slender citron wood, thick round purlin and a lot of yellow mud, showing the perfect combination of the civil world.

All of them are piled up, framed, separated and covered with local building materials-Tuwa people's unique secret space was born here for them to live, give birth, store things, grow old, endure and die-and dozens and hundreds of such secret spaces gathered irregularly in Harmony Village, which became a labyrinth that I witnessed and deepened in the rolling mountains in northern Altay.

In Harmony Village, most of the local wooden houses are rectangular with spires, some are independent on high and dry hillsides, and some are connected together on the flat ground. Inside the house, purlins are placed on several wooden pillars, citron is placed on the purlins, and grass mud is smeared on the citron to form a roof. On the ground, it is still plastered with grass mud. The sun poured down, although it was not dazzling, but the thick heat swept my face and body.