How Much Space Does One Really Need? | Grandma Kouzi

Now I can say with certainty that the saying must have originated in the south. A northern winter can genuinely kill you in a draughty house, so northern brick-and-tile houses, rammed-earth houses and mud-brick houses all have thick walls that refuse any aligned joints — sealed so tightly that not a breath of air passes.

But the timber-plank houses so common in the south are different: the “wall” is just a single layer of planks, and no matter how the boards are grooved and mated, gaps remain between them. Heat expands and cold contracts — and dampness swells while dryness shrinks — so the gaps grow ever wider. A wall has as many gaps as it has planks.

There truly is no wall that lets in no wind; the damp, cold breeze passes through unimpeded. So the southerners’ fortitude against the cold is a foundational skill inherited from childhood, and it is perfectly natural that they develop such fullness of vitality. But I had missed the best window for that training. The more I practised, the worse I became — I had turned myself into a winter-crying bird, and every day, shivering, I swore the same fierce oath: I must build a heated kang.

III. How Timber Planks Can Become an Airtight Wall

I would use the old granaries of the local farming tradition. In days gone by, every household here had one: six sides enclosed in fine fir planks, joined entirely by mortise-and-tenon joinery — not a single iron nail in the whole structure. But times have changed. The newer houses have no granaries, and all the old ones have been dismantled and sold off as planks — you could pick one up for around a thousand yuan.

I bought four in one go.

The granaries were perfectly square, so the heated-kang house would be rectangular — two granaries joined end to end. I had bought two extra so I could build an airtight wall from the timber. Every wall would be double-layered planking, with waterproof sheeting and fibreglass insulation sandwiched between the boards — preserving the authentic look of the granary while guaranteeing that not a breath of air would slip through.

When local friends heard I planned to live inside a granary, they kept asking me: do you know where they used to lock up caught thieves? In the granary.

Cramped, claustrophobic, pitch-dark, airless — a granary made a fine makeshift prison. But how could one actually live in one? Yet I was determined to turn this wooden box — too tight for mice to squeeze into, too secure for thieves to escape from — into a comfortable dwelling that could both ward off the bitter cold and breathe freely.

The cure for claustrophobia is openness. I bought freezer doors for ten yuan each from a scrap yard — double-glazed, transparent, and thermally insulated — and fitted them into the kang-room roof. The kitchen, however, needed more than light; it needed ventilation too. So beyond four pairs of hinged glass windows, I cut an opening in the top panel and fitted a large-diameter passive wind turbine.

Once transparency was sorted, it was time to tackle the tightness. Using old granaries to build a small house had been decided long ago, but I did not pursue extreme compactness inside. The larger granaries, also called six-chi granaries, were two metres square — actually 1.95 metres across the interior, under four square metres. I widened them just slightly, from 1.95 to 2.2 metres. Considering storage needs, I also extended the right-hand side outward, which gave me a wardrobe-and-bookshelf combination for clothes across all four seasons and my current reads.

The kitchen adjoining the kang-room kept the same width of 2.2 metres, but its length was extended to 2.7 metres, giving nearly six square metres. Kang-room plus kitchen: just over ten square metres — a tiny fraction more.

The most important thing about a living space is that it meets one’s needs. For me, that boils down to eating, drinking, the lavatory, reading, and exercise.

However big or small, if a place meets your needs, it is a good place.

The 1.2-metre bed in the kang-room is ample for one person to sleep soundly; offsetting the 1.2-metre yoga mat alongside it allows room for mat exercises. The kitchen centres on the rocket stove, whose 60-centimetre chimney radiator and firewood intake face south, connecting to the kang-room. Arranged around this centre: firewood is stacked beneath the water basin on the east wall, the long strip of windowsill serves as storage for cooking and water utensils, and a compact quick-boil kettle perches upon it.

In the northeast corner by the door, flush against the wall, stands a ceiling-height corner cabinet stuffed with odds and ends, plus an electric griddle and a kettle. The clear space left in the middle of the little kitchen is enough for skipping rope. Clothes, food, shelter, leisure — every personal need can be met comfortably indoors.

Small as the house is, it not only lets one do as one pleases alone but also accommodates a gathering around the stove. Along the north wall, between the east and west doors, I have laid an over-two-hundred-year-old timber plank flat against the wall as my bench; bring in a second long beam and rest it between the east and west walls, and there is a grand long table. Broad plank benches in a row — seven or eight guests sit easily, and everything tastes wonderful.

The west wall does more than one job. The original design was a folding desk: pin a granary door panel to the wall, and it drops down as a desk; fold it up and it tucks away over the window.

This photograph was taken in 2022, just after construction and before I had moved in. I was quite pleased with my folding desk, which dominated the centre of the room. It was only later I realised that such a large tabletop in the tiny kitchen produced both visual and physical congestion — and the matching seat simply blocked the path up onto the kang.

So this grand-looking table was folded away. The tall desk is gone; the windowsill board that had been hidden beneath it has become a bench-and-table combo. Lay a soft cushion on the step up to the kang-room, and you have a seat.

Clearing the floor is the lazy person’s golden rule for small-space living. Odds and ends: those up top go on the wall, those below disappear from sight. And so bench, stool, or reclining chair — sit however you please; read or daydream, whatever you fancy.

Once the lazy person is settled, everything on the wall or tucked away falls within arm’s reach — wonderfully convenient to fetch. Kettle, little pot, electric griddle: whatever you fancy cooking or brewing, just make it.

The seat made from an old door panel is generously broad — one can even meditate on it. Eating and flipping through a book are no trouble, though you must sit sideways. And if you want to sit up straight, working at a computer, the board hidden beneath folds out to become a desk.

V. Winning Back Vitality Through the Kang

I used to dread the endless rain, dread the temperature drops, dread them to the point of trembling. The heated kang has given me the nerve to fear neither heaven nor earth. The temperature falls? Head straight back and light the fire. Five degrees outside, fifteen inside — and if you don’t plug the stove mouth in time to rein in the flames, you’re heading straight for twenty-five.

Once your body is warm, it naturally unfurls. Carrying your own pocket of heat, you step outside without flinching. People started to wonder why I dressed so lightly: ‘Aren’t you cold?’ — us Northerners, at long last, have our own fullness of vitality down south!

The change goes beyond temperature — humidity shifted too. When the huínántiān rains come — that southern season when warm, wet air meets cold surfaces — they pour for ten days or half a month, and the air grows so thick with moisture that a sheen of water coats the tiled floor and the walls.

This year Fujian’s rains have been extraordinary. In late March, on a raw, sodden, wind-driven day, I tucked myself into my little nest, lit the stove, and dressed in thin, dry clothes to write about the fire beside me. The spring rains continued into May; I kept the stove going to dry my clothes, and on days when nothing could be done out in the fields, I dug out manuscripts to revise.

I am grateful for this small nest of mine and its warm fire, which let me settle into myself through all that protracted rain and vapour. Thinking of those who must fend off the bitter wind and cruel rain on nothing but inner vitality — good Lord, you must forgive my Schadenfreude.

VI. How Much Space Does One Need?

By 16 June this year, I had been in Wicked Valley a full three years.

In truth, that mu and three tenths of land of mine could still yield more, even without chemical fertiliser or pesticide — enough to feed more than just me. Chasing maximum output alone would leave both me and the land more exhausted. The land and the farmer preying on each other is not what I want, so I step back a pace and let both of us breathe easier.

I work without being overworked, idle without being useless; the harvest is neither lavish nor meagre. Gradually I have found a more relaxed, easy-going rapport with the land I stand upon — we shape one another, we adjust to one another.

The space around me is the same.

Back to the original question: ‘How much space does one need?’ Apart from the kang-room and kitchen of just over ten square metres, outside the granary nest I have set a dry toilet beyond the west window; the patch of ground beside it doubles as an open-air shower, adding roughly two more square metres of concrete paving. In all — kang-room, kitchen, the add-on wardrobe, the dry toilet and the outdoor shower, plus the paved strip along the wall — everything fits within fifteen square metres.

Last year friends from Yunnan came to visit. The couple had once owned several large courtyard houses and took a particular interest in my little room: ‘For us, just one room like this would be enough.’

Heaven and earth turn full circles; the seasons shift from cloudless skies to overcast and back. The stove-fire brings warmth to ward off wind and frost; the stove-fire brings dryness to banish the Meiyu’s damp gloom. Two modest granaries — neither too big, nor too small — carry every one of my life’s needs with room to spare. Fifteen square metres: body and mind at rest, all in its proper place.

Author, FoodThink

Kouzi

A resolute farming wanderer, a village brewmaster. Full-time foodie, part-time farmer, weekend writer.

 

 

All illustrations in this article are by the author unless otherwise credited.

Editing: Wang Hao