Xiao Hong’s family compound in Hulan was divided into east and west courtyards. A provincial culture report says the west courtyard was rented out and that rent later helped sustain the household. It contained seven rooms reached through a gateway, as well as a mill, housing for a pig-raising household, rooms associated with a woman known as Wang, a flour mill and smaller side rooms. The tenants’ rooms were tied to different trades and livelihoods.
From the journal
The rented west courtyard behind Xiao Hong’s Hulan home
The west courtyard at Xiao Hong’s family compound held rental rooms and work spaces, a social world echoed in the people of Tales of Hulan River.
In the same city · Harbin ↗A courtyard that earned rent
A neighborhood within a home
The west courtyard was not simply a quiet extension of the family residence. Its rooms were connected to work and rented life: grinding, raising pigs, making flour and keeping a household under someone else’s roof. That mix helps explain why a compound could also function as a small social world. The domestic boundary between the family’s east courtyard and tenants’ west courtyard shaped the way people met, worked and shared space.
From lived details to fiction
The official account connects several west-courtyard tenants and occupations with characters described in Xiao Hong’s Tales of Hulan River. The rooms—mill, flour shop, pig-raising household and rented quarters—give the novel’s neighborhood world a material setting.