In fact, when ordinary families built houses these days, they only needed to get some timber for the purlins and rafters, which generally had to be bought. They prepared everything else themselves. They molded their own adobe bricks, tied their own reed bundles, gathered stones for the foundations, and hauled the earth themselves.
So building a three-room house did not cost much money. It was mostly hard physical work.
The houses in Northern Xinjiang at the time were made of adobe, higher on the north side than the south, but they were a little different from the single-slope houses in Gansu that were also higher to the north. The north side was usually only half a meter to a meter higher than the south, so the difference was not particularly noticeable.
The reason for making the north side higher was to keep water from collecting on top. When it rained, the water would run straight down the roof.
Once the homestead plot had been decided on, the saline soil on the surface had to be dug away. Stones the size of volleyballs were gathered and laid out to mark the rooms, then yellow earth was dug elsewhere and brought over to fill the foundations.
The houses in the Production Team's residential settlements here were all built on saline flats. If the saline topsoil was not removed, salts would seep up inside the finished houses, forming a white, fuzzy crust.
Once the foundations had been filled with earth and rammed solid, the next step was to build the house with adobe bricks.
Molding adobe bricks was an essential skill for adults and children here. Adults needed to build their own houses, while children had to fulfill their work-study assignments at school.
The process was to find an area of yellow earth,