Home > Ethnic Peoples > Zhuang > A Traditional Zhuang House


A Traditional Zhuang House  by Situ Hui Ling
"B aaaaa…” A sudden bleating sound from inside the house startled me as I sat on a bench near the front entrance of the
tall, airy wooden house. “Baaaaa…”

The bleating started again. There must be a goat nearby, I thought. Curious, I walked in and looked around the house.

Pix
Traditional Zhuang house, Du’an County, Guangxi.


Pix
Multi-purpose living space.
Pix
Goats under the floor!

Facing the front entrance stood a wall plastered with a row of faded blue and red paper slips with Chinese characters written on them. A square table held bowls with incense sticks before the ancestral altar facing the main entrance. A pile of corn in their husks stood in the central living space, part of the corn harvest from that year. There was no goat behind the wall. Instead, there was a rickety wooden stair that led up to a cement roof balcony, a more recent addition to the thirty-year-old wooden house.

The grandmother heard her grandchildren and me talking about the goat sounds. She smiled knowingly at us and lifted up a wooden plank from the floor on the left side of the hall. We peered into the darkness below as she flicked on a switch and a weak yellow light began to glow. After a while, we saw that there were not one but three goats beneath us. She bundled up a big sheaf of leaves and stalks from a nearby pile which she attached to a rope and lowered to the hungry animals. The two adult goats tugged and chewed on the suspended grass as the young kid stayed behind and bleated. Perhaps it wanted attention …

I was impressed with the functionality of the house; the materials and design seemed to fit well with the climate of the area and lifestyle of the farmers. The wooden planks and high ceiling kept the house and the inhabitants inside cool, sheltered from the sweltering heat outside. On the right side of the main floor of the house stood a small machine for removing corn kernels from the cob, and beside it a spread of golden corn. The upper floor was used for storage of tools, corn and other household items, while all surfaces exposed to the sun could be used for drying corn. The central space was used for work, meals and leisure.

The kitchen stood at the back of the house, where wood-fired stoves were used for cooking. When lunch was ready, two low tables and an assortment of plastic and wooden stools were set up in the central area before the dishes were brought out.

As we enjoyed lunch together, I was glad to see that there was no mutton on the table. It would have been difficult to enjoy that dish while hearing the plaintive bleating of the goat kid in the background.