The adobe walls she's creating, one brick at a time, are made from Nebraskan clay, sand and straw. The final product -- a 6-by-12-foot hut, typical of those in rural China -- will be much like the sod houses of Nebraska's early pioneers.

But Liu's house, built of Nebraskan materials and on Nebraskan soil, still will be a part of her and China. Like the house, she said, she is a foreign object in America.

"This little house will be a Chinese thing in America," she said. "It goes back to my roots and me coming here and being judged."

Liu and other volunteers started making the bricks in July at Art Farm near Marquette. The completed bricks need to dry in the sun for several weeks, and Liu must make a wooden support structure and weave the thatched roof before building the house with bricks and mortar.

The small home, in which she'll live for a week, will return to the earth in 20 or 30 years like those early sod houses.

Other aspects of the project tie Liu and her work back to Nebraska. Brick making isn't unknown to Central Nebraska, said Janet Williams, co-director of Art Farm.

"A lot of these places would have had these brick-making factories," Williams said, citing Clay County as an example.

Liu gathered the instructions for building her house from her father of Jilin, China. She's following nearly the traditional way but with a few technological updates, such as using a mechanical mortar mixer for the clay. In older times, villagers would gather to stomp on the clay in large pits to mix the materials.

Instead, armed with templates that can make four bricks at a time, she and helpers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln set to work on pressing the clay into the molds, one fistful of mud at a time.

"I've always been interested in building with clay or earth materials, but I've never done it," said Meredith Brickell, a UNL graduate student. "Really, it's such a simple process."

Ray Duffey and Carlos Guerrero helped scoop the raw materials into the mortar mixer. The recipe was simple: one bucket of water, three shovels of clay, one shovel of sand and a handful of straw.

Days later, Art Farm intern Nathan Hubert helped Liu carry the partially dried bricks from their makeshift shelves to wooden pallets, where they rested vertically to allow better drying.

"We're moving mountains over here, mountains of earth," Hubert said. "It's very momentous."

The process moves slowly, and Liu has had to learn patience. She still needs to make about 400 more bricks, but the work of volunteers, and the loan of a mortar mixer from Peterson Construction in Marquette, will help.

By mid-August, she said, the house should be complete. Her last step will be pasting U.S. newspaper articles about China to the inside walls of the house.

A U.S. resident for nine years, Liu said she plans to remain here for some time. In America, she said, she's able to feel more connected to her home.

"If I go back to China, I'll feel like there's a big gap," she said. "But when I'm here, I feel more Chinese."