I noticed that the old woman’s house was built partly with bricks and partly with a grey coloured building material. I found out that corn straw is mixed with soil to create a natural building material for some rural housings in China and this is an example of it. Corn straw is a natural, renewable natural resource which also apparently has some good thermal insulation properties. A lot of farms in this area are corn farms and after the corns have been harvested the rest of the corn plant is used for firewood and also as a building material.