Here in North America, we're used to our Mississauga homes following a certain sort of pattern. There are detached homes and there are town houses and there are condos, but inside they're all pretty much the same. One of the biggest shocks people experience during their move to China is that they often have to completely redefine their idea of what a living space should be. Some Chinese homes can seen downright alien to a North American, none more so than the yurt, which we will describe here for you.

Yurts aren't something you'll run into if you're looking for a place to stay in Shanghai or Beijing. In those areas, the apartments will not be too dissimilar to the Lakeshore condos we're familiar with, albeit smaller. It's not until you sojourn to the remote reaches of the Mongolian steppes do you start to run across this rather peculiar type of home. Designed by nomadic tribes as a portable home that would actually keep out the frigid Siberian winds, the yurt is part tent, part wooden hut.

Since the grasslands where these Asiatic tribes dwell with their livestock are so vast and treeless, yurts are designed to be disassembled and strapped to the backs of pack animals such as camels or yaks. Thus when it is time to move on, you can take your home with you rather than registering it with Guelph Realty and buying another home at the end of your journey. With the assistance of your family, it takes only a few hours to assemble or disassemble a yurt. When they are initially constructed, the wooden frame must be bought from the lowlands below the steppes where trees are more common.

A typical yurt consists of a circular wooden lattice frame not unlike the kind of fence you might put up around your above ground swimming pool, but with a doorframe. Once unfolded, roof poles are tied between the lattice and the center crown at the apex of the roof, which sometimes contains a weight to keep everything together through compression. Once the frame is erected, a thin plastic cover goes over the roof, which is then topped with a thick pelt cover that drapes over the entire home, making it as snug as any of the Annex houses in Toronto.

Once the yurt is set up, the family unloads their possessions from their pack animals and arranges the inside to their satisfaction. Far from being a primitive tent, yurt homes have potbellied stoves, proper beds, woven rugs, real furniture, and even sometimes electronic devices like laptops or televisions. Thus your yurt could resemble your old Forest Hill houses more closely than you might think. If you think you might want to try yurt living, you will in all likelihood have to build your own, as their components are not generally mass produced.