Hubei Cliff Dwelling
Rock-CutAsiaChinaNot established
Location approximate. The film names only Hubei, so the pin sits on Enshi, where Hubei's cliff dwellings are concentrated — 恩施崖居, described by National Geographic China as fossil specimens in the history of vernacular dwelling — but the site may be elsewhere in the province. An entire mountainside hollowed out by hand into dozens of stone rooms, fitted out to be lived in rather than sheltered in, reached across a cliff face. The labour is the point and so is the question behind it : this is not a cave anyone improved, it is a building excavated rather than built, and the reason people chose to make a home this way — war, most likely, as at the other Chinese cliff settlements — is not recorded anywhere on the site.
Open in the Atlas map →Walkthrough videos (1)
A thousand-year-old cliff dwelling in Hubei: an entire mountain hollowed out · Luzhou Abo