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A Traditional Yi House  by Mother of Brook Song
O n the same day that our Nuosu friend invited us to celebrate Yi New Year, I got to see a traditional Yi house more closely.

After riding on a bus for an hour and walking on a trail for another hour, finally we saw our friend’s house. It was on a flattened out area on the side of the mountain. There were several mud buildings. The main one had stones for the first few feet off the ground and a tile roof. The other buildings had only mud and straw covering the beams for roofs. There was some plastic under the straw.

They put our coats and bags on a bed in the room by the pigpen. The room had pictures of girls and advertisements pasted up on the walls.

The goat pen was a muck with straw thrown on top. There were two sides to it and a door hanging off its hinges. When I asked our friend if there was trouble among neighbors or if things got stolen, he pointed out the door and said that

Pix
A village Yi home in Sichuan.
if anyone wanted to steal something, they could just come in. But he said that there was no such trouble. They had three kid goats which our kids loved holding and playing with. As well as the fat five-month-old pig they slaughtered, there were two more pigs in the pen. Chickens and chicks ran about.

In the central open area there was a square wooden table painted bright red. And there were matching benches which they moved in or out of the house depending on where we were. It was in this area that they slaughtered the pig. There were piles of pumpkins and pumpkin shells on one side.

The main house was typically pitch dark, no windows. Other than the light from the open door, which shone straight in, to either side of the room it was black. The fire was blazing continually and the smoke bothered us so that we couldn’t be in the house more than a few minutes at a time. They didn’t mind and allowed us to eat outside very comfortably in the sun on a red wooden table and benches. The smoke didn’t seem to bother them.

On the stove side, there was a ladder leading up to the second floor. Corn and meat were hanging up there on the second floor. There was an ancestor offering cabinet in the back, by the fire pit side. There were many neat large sacks of grain, I suppose, on the bottom floor on the stove side. It was a packed dirt floor, nicely swept. After the pig butchering, there was some blood on the floor. The father used a shovel lying on the inside wall of the house to lift up some loose sand-like dirt and cover the blood. He then swept the floor, removing it. I was impressed at how tidy everything was and how many provisions they had stored away.

It seemed that everything had a place and their simple tools, were useful and well kept. For example they had an iron grating they put over the fire pit when they wanted to heat water in the kettle. When not in use, it was removed with the fire tongs. Once, the sister wanted to see something in the house. She picked up a coal with the fire tongs and lit a small Aladdin style lamp and carried it to the side of the room.

And so, these things are a part of typical home in a Nuosu Yi village living.