Stone Works in China

Through out the countryside and in some small cities you will find beautiful stone work in buildings, paths, walls and homes. I started looking at it as art work rather than just stones neatly put together. The more I became interested in them the more I learned about it. In the old days little building materials were available so they had to use what was available in their areas. Where wood was available you can find wooden structures many built without nails using pegs and without electric tools even yet today. Where there was little wood, they used stones neatly fitted together. Clay bricks were used in many cases where there were no stones or wood. Many thousands today do still live in constructed caves in the ground (check an earlier blog story about cave people) I wondered what they used for a binding agent since they didn't have concrete and found that they often used sticky rice mixed with sand. During the years of little or no food, they often dug out the material and separated the rice from the sand for food. During the recent earthquakes it is easy to understand why so many lives were lost when these stone structures collapsed without reinforcements. I recently seen the same situation in Kona, Hawaii in the old churches there that remain unstable and some fallen down. Private Custom Tours to China is my business as well as being a China Travel Service. For more information check our web site at www.interlakechinatours.com