The Fujian Tulou

Tulou are communal houses of rammed earth, built by Hakka and Minnan families in the hills of southwest Fujian. The largest are rings four or five storeys high, with walls more than a metre thick at the base, a single gate, and an inner courtyard holding a well and an ancestral hall. Each family owns a vertical slice of the ring: kitchen at the bottom, storage above, bedrooms on the upper floors, with open galleries running right around the inside. Several clusters are inscribed as World Heritage. Many are still lived in, with chillies and tea drying on the galleries, chickens in the yard and tour groups walking through the middle of it.

History

Most tulou were built between the 12th and 20th centuries: with armed bandits plaguing southern China, people in southern Fujian first built strongholds on mountaintops, which evolved into these fortified communal houses, so well defended by their residents that even large bandit gangs dared not attack them. The word tulou first appears in a Zhangzhou county record of 1573, under the Ming. Among dated examples, Yuchanglou is said to date from 1308 and the elliptical Qiyun Lou in Hua'an from 1371; Jiqinglou, the largest round tulou, was built in 1419, Chengqi Lou in 1709, Eryilou in 1770, the first building at Tianluokeng in 1796 and Zhencheng Lou in 1912, by the descendants of a rich tobacco merchant. Long passed over by mainstream literature, they reached a wider public after Chengqi Lou appeared in a book in 1980, and in 2008 UNESCO inscribed 46 tulou, in six clusters and four single buildings, as a World Heritage Site (Wikipedia, Fujian tulou).

The main sights

• Tianluokeng cluster - four round buildings and a square one grouped on a hillside, seen from the road above.
• Zhencheng Lou - a large double-ring building with a decorated ancestral hall at its centre.
• The inner galleries - wooden balconies stacked around the courtyard with the sky as a circle above.
• The valley setting - terraced tea and rice on the slopes between the clusters.

When to go

Spring and autumn suit the hills; summer is hot and humid, and typhoon rain can close roads in late summer. The clusters are far apart, so either hire a car for two days or stay overnight in a tulou guesthouse. Early morning, before the coaches arrive from Xiamen, is when the buildings are working homes rather than exhibits.

Practical notes

The drive from Xiamen is long and day tours spend more time on the bus than in the buildings. Guesthouse rooms inside are basic, thin-walled and usually share bathrooms. Some buildings are heavily geared to visitors, with tea sales pressed on you at every turn, and residents are understandably tired of cameras pointed into their kitchens.

Nearby

Xiamen is a few hours east, and the banyan-shaded village of Yunshuiyao lies between the clusters.

Key facts