The slanting afternoon sun cast sharp shadows as An Wei, the host of a rural Chinese teaching project I had joined, showed us the caves where An Shang villagers lived 20 years before.
“This is where I visited my uncle’s family in their cave,” he said, leading us into the remains of one.” The sleeping platform and a hole for the stove pipe remained. An Wei chuckled and pointed to a niche above the entrance. “That’s where the winter ‘toilet paper’ (small loess chunks) was kept. The toilet was outside the wall.” To the left, he pointed out the caves where his schoolmates and the current village mayor had lived.
I was surprised that villagers had inhabited the caves so recently. The village was now only a two-hour drive from the city of Xi’an. But a college student from farther north in the province told me he had lived in a cave when he was young, and it was larger and more comfortable than his family’s present apartment. So there were advantages. 
An Shang is located on the Loess Plateau, a vast area where for millennia fierce winds laid down layers of silt from the Gobi Desert. Over time, it compacted into loess, sometimes several kilometers in depth and stable enough to carve cave dwellings into it.
One afternoon, Baoli, another project leader who grew up in a nearby village, took us on a brisk walk to the bluff that rises above the Wei River. One cave after another was strung along the edge of the bluffs, a common arrangement. Another time, she took us to what must have been a community of caves. A large blackboard attached between two caves was most likely used for teaching or announcements.
Another had a red star, messages and a barred window on its front wall. Baoli said it was probably used by the Communist Party in the early days of the People’s Republic of China. One message mentioned Mao Zedong and urged citizens not to waste food. Nearby caves held clay bed remnants and in the backs of some, passages that led to other caves.
Not too distant from this abandoned community was a cave now in use as a religious shrine. Two women cared for it. After a college student accompanying us talked with them, they agreed to show us the painting in the shrine as well as the side room where one of them slept. They then had him pose on their clay bed.
Another had a red star, messages and a barred window on its front wall. Baoli said it was probably used by the Communist Party in the early days of the People’s Republic of China. One message mentioned Mao Zedong and urged citizens not to waste food. Nearby caves held clay bed remnants and in the backs of some, passages that led to other caves.
Not too distant from this abandoned community was a cave now in use as a religious shrine. Two women cared for it. After a college student accompanying us talked with them, they agreed to show us the painting in the shrine as well as the side room where one of them slept. They then had him pose on their clay bed.
Caves dot the landscape throughout the area of the Loess Plateau, some similar to those we found near An Shang and others that are still in use with reenforced fronts and other amenities.