Pinglu County is located in the southernmost part of Shanxi Province. Through Maojindu, it reaches the boundary of Henan Province. The terrain here is complex, and there are mountains, walls, ditches and beaches. The terrain is "high in the north and low in the south. There is a slope from Zhongtiao Mountain to the Yellow River, with an altitude difference of more than 500. The distance between the north and the south is only 25 kilometers, and the distance between the East and the west is narrow and long, reaching 150 kilometers from the east to the West.
There are 75 gullies in the county. There are countless branch gullies and Maogou gullies. Since ancient times, people have used the saying of "flat land, uneven gullies and three dry gullies" to describe it. This kind of special natural environment and long-standing residential construction custom has formed a unique residential form here, namely, Yinyuan Courtyard, which shows the distinct characteristics of residential folk inheritance in the Loess Plateau.
Generally, Yinyuan Courtyard of a farmhouse is three or forty meters long, forty meters wide and about ten meters deep. The construction method is to select a flat place, dig a deep pit like a patio from the top to the bottom to form an open yard, and then dig a main kiln and a left and right side kiln on the pit wall, which is an open and two concealed structure. Then a long upward and downward inclined door hole is dug at the corner of the yard, and the gate is at the top of the door hole. In general, people live in the front cave which exposes to the sun, while the caves on both sides pile up sundries or raise livestock.
In general, deep cellars are dug in the courtyard, and the walls are plastered with lime mud to store rainwater, which can be used for people and animals to drink after sedimentation. In order to drain water, dig a large earth pit in one corner of the yard, commonly known as "dry well", so that the rainwater in the yard flows into the well, and then slowly infiltrates into the ground. Most farmhouses have drainage channels under the doorways to prevent rainwater from pouring into the caves during downpours.
On most of the caves for people to live in are threshing grounds, and the caves are directly connected to them as chimneys. The granary in the cave is also directly connected to the ground of the threshing ground which is convenient to flow the ground and dried grain from the threshing ground through the small hole. It saves much energy and time. The hole is covered with stone usually.
The village, which is composed of Diyin courtyard, is not easy to find even when people are 100 meters away. Only when you are close to the edge of the yard, can you see its true appearance. So there is a folk song describing it: "you can't see the mountain when you go up the mountain, you can't see the village when you go into the village. The smoke are from the flat ground, and suddenly you can hear the sound of chickens and dogs." The Diyin Courtyard are everywhere in Pinglu and Ruicheng counties which are in the south of Zhongtiao Mountain at the south of Shanxi Province.
Hardworking farmers plant trees in front of the inner slope of the courtyard. The Diyin Courtyard is hidden in the shade of trees. The sound of chickens and dogs is heard but not seen. The noise of people can be heard but invisible. It is a very suitable living form for the local natural environment. It has become a unique type of village landscape in Shanxi Province. Therefore, it is valued by experts of folklore and anthropology at home and abroad.
The earliest way of living in China is cave dwelling. According to the Book of Rites, the former kings did not have a palace. In winter, they lived in a camp cave, and in summer, he lived in a juniper nest. "Yingku" is a kind of cave house. It also writes in Mozi: "Before the ancient people knew the palace, they lived in the cave in the mausoleum." Later, it developed into a horizontal cave room, namely Yaodong Cave. Then there are the vertical cave rooms, that is, Diyin Courtyard, and the half cave rooms. At last, ground buildings were created.
Of course, the cultural choice of human beings is no single, and the choice of the form of folk houses is no exception. In Pinglu, where the natural environment is the same, there are also other forms of dwellings, especially in recent years, with the improvement of people's living standards, brick and tile houses are gradually increasing.
There are also Diyin Courtyard in other places which has similar natural environment with Pinglu, such as Wenxi, Wanrong and Linfen in South Shanxi, and many places in Henan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. However, Pinglu Diyin Courtyard is very common and distinctive, which makes it a unique type with Loess Plateau style in Shanxi residential buildings and has been used to this day.
