Stone houses are popular in Tibet, western Sichuan and parts of Qinghai and Gansu in western China, where ethnic Tibetans live in compact communities. A typical stone house is a three-story structure.

    The ground floor is used as animal shed, and the second floor, as the family's living quarters. The top floor, however, features the family hall for Buddha worshipping. A well-to-do urban family often has a courtyard, with a row of two-story buildings at each of the four sides.

    The bedrooms, kitchens and guestrooms are on the first floor, the family hall for Buddha worshipping, on the upper floor. The hall for Buddha worshipping is always the most importance place whether the house is large or small and wherever it is, in an urban center or in the countryside.

    And as such, it is always richly decorated. The lower part of the structure is built with rocks without polishing, and the upper part is painstaking whitewashed. Ladder-shaped windows in neat rows constitute a salient feature of such a structure, and all the window eaves are painted in bright colors.