I worked in a Chinese village called “Shuifu” in the Yunnan Province in the winter of 1976-1977. The Chinese were building a new natural-gas fed fertilizer plant there. I was in charge of starting the power plant attached to the fertilizer plant.
The village had its very own “tile factory” which was nothing more than a spot by a clay bank, some wire saws to cut the clay, a rubber mold to hand-form the semicircular tile, and a crude wood-fired kiln. Most houses in the village were single-room, made from rammed earth, had open windows (no glass), and had thatched roofs. The “Rich” people had tiled roofs.
I’m sure what I observed was more primitive than the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC) terracotta tile manufacturing described in this article.
The fastest way to solve national poverty is to redefine it. :^)