What makes an ancient house sturdy?

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In my hometown in Jiangxi, there are many ancient buildings, some from the Qing dynasty and others from the Ming dynasty. As a child, I lived in an ancient house with a history of several hundred years; right above the main entrance of the house were the characters \"Zhou Sima’s Residence\" written in regular script. It seems that some of my ancestors were officials. The old house is quite large, and fifteen or sixteen families live there. It rains a lot in the south; when I was young, I saw adults replacing the tiles on the old houses – those thin, light-blue tiles are unique to the south. Each time tiles are replaced, it is a labor-intensive task, and the men of each household participate. I lived in the old house for seven or eight years; I saw the tiles replaced twice, but I never saw any repairs done to the walls. Once I asked my father if he had ever seen the walls of an ancient house, and he said that in decades of time he had never seen one. Later on, no one lived in the old house anymore. One day, a shed filled with straw caught fire, and a corner of the building collapsed, revealing the true structure of the wall. It turns out that the walls were built with large blue bricks on the inside and outside, with red soil compacted in between. To this day, I wonder how such walls can withstand hundreds of years of weathering Also, I wonder why modern reinforced concrete buildings have a shorter lifespan than these ancient buildings Last edited by Lai Lai on 2009-4-5 20:57]