Spanning over a vast territory of 9.6 million square kilometers, carrying 1.3 billion people of 56 ancient ethnic groups, China has weaved a series of colorful pictures of different Chinese residential houses: some live in bamboo lofts, some set home above water, some pack their houses on horseback, some enjoy the generous gift of Mother Nature in Yaodong caves…

Here I listed ten types of Chinese residential houses I’ve posted individually. You will get an extensive understanding about what types of houses Chinese people live in.

One major geographic characterisitic that distinguished Jiang Nan from Northern China is its abundance in water resources. Plenty precipitates, lakes, rivers, channels, etc. influenced every part of life and culture in Jiang Nan region, including residential houses.

Jiang Nan houses have a unique sense of simplicity: white wall and black tiles, which represents the humbleness of Jiang Nan people.

Here are the rest four of top 8 coasts in China.

Located 15km south of the famous Bei-Dai-He resort, Changli beach was not discovered for tourism development until early 1980s, when a geographer from Chinese Academy of Science found this 52.1km long beach and called it China’s “Golden Beach”, comparing it to the Queensland one.

Tibetan Plateau, “Roof of the World” “the Third Pole”, is one of the most remote regions in the world. Given its extreme altitude (4,000-5000 meters or above), not every tourist is physically suitable to go traveling in Tibet. For the same reason, not many good photographers have fully presented its beauty to the world. An enthusiastic traveler from the Netherlands, also a great photographer on Flickr, Jan Reurink, has traveled in Tibet extensively (for at least three times, I guess) and brought us a great collection of eye-catching images of the Mysterious Tibet:

Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China is a vast territory inhiabitated by several ethnic groups. Xinjiang has a continental climate, “the farthest region to the ocean”, the temperature changes dramaticaly between day and night, known as “fur coat in the morning, yarn at noon; have watermelon close to the stove at night.” In addition, 7 of 13 resident ethnic groups in Xinjiang are Muslims. So the architecture here is deeply influenced by Islamic culture and has its unique regional and ethnic characteristics.