A hotel containing 248 cave dwellings in seven rows will be built as the world's largest structure of its kind in Yan'an, the holy land of the Chinese Communists, Xinhua news agency reported.
The Stone Cave-house Hotel will be located in Yangjialing Village in Qiaogou Township in Baota District as another tourist attraction in in Shaanxi Province in the northwest.
The hotel will be built of stone and cost 5 million yuan (US$600,000). It will be 500 meters from the cave-houses used by late Chairman Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, and other revolutionary veterans between 1936 and 1947.
Yan'an was thus described as the holy land of Chinese revolutionaries.
Just like the traditional loessial cave-houses built in Yan'an on the Loess Plateau, the new cave dwellings are cool in summer and warm in winter, the news agency said.
Local officials said the hotel will surpass the current world's record-holder, Yan'an University, which has 226 cave houses in six rows.
(eastday.com 10/15/2001)
