The Tulous of Fujian: South East China Part 11

Medieval Buildings and a Unique Lifestyle that has Adapted to the Modern World

Xiamen to the Tian Luokeng Scenic Area

China

After two poor breakfasts in Wuyishan, our slightly odd re-purposed apartment block hotel provided a fine Chinese breakfast. Fortified with vegetables, noodles, a tea egg, cake and fruit we set off with S for a lengthy journey into the interior.

We left Xiamen in drizzle, the tops of the tower blocks lost in the mist. The weather improved as we headed west along the motorway and by the time we stopped for a comfort break the rain had almost ceased.

To visit the Hakka communities we drove around 150km west from Xiamen

Leaving the motorway where the land became hilly, we followed narrow roads that wound between tea plantations, banana groves and orchards of oranges and pomelos, the huge pomelos hanging from trees looking far too flimsy to bear their weight.

We paused at a banana stall where S bought some red bananas and some more normal looking bananas he said were ‘special’.

Buying unusual bananas, somewhere west of Xiamen

We scoffed the 'nanas as we drove deeper into the hills. The chunky red ones had a denser texture than ‘regular’ bananas but the flavour was the same, those described as ‘special’ had a more normal texture but tasted weirdly like apples - special indeed.

The Hakka

40 minutes later we were entering Fujian’s Hakka heartland. The Hakka are a Han Chinese group originally from the Yellow River Valley who migrated south to avoid war and famine. Many settled in scattered areas across southern China while others kept going and now make up a substantial proportion of the Chinese diaspora across south east Asia. There are estimated to be 30 million Hakka in China’s seven southern provinces (3 million of them in western Fujian) and maybe as many again living outside China.

The Tian Luokeng - Scenic Area and Tulou Cluster

The Chinese government, with their usual grim desire to regiment all tourism, have built an enormous office for the Tian Luokeng Scenic Area with parking space for hundreds of buses and countless cars. S popped in to buy tickets while we regarded the empty car park with satisfaction.

Tian Luokeng Scenic Area Offices

S had previously told us that he was not only Hakka but was born in this area, so first he took us to see an ancestor shrine…

Ancestor Shrine, Tian Luokeng Scenic Area, Fujian

…and then a forest. He referred to the trees as cedars, which looks doubtful to me, but this piece of ancient woodland clearly had some importance….

Old woodland, Tian Luokeng Scenic Area

Then he took us to the Tian Luokeng Toulu Cluster, the region’s main attractions.

The Tian Luokeng Tulou Cluster, Fujian

‘Hakka’ means ‘guest’, though the Hakka have not always been welcome guests, particularly in Guangdong Province where the Punti-Hakka Clan Wars (1855-67) resulted in a million deaths. Defence, at least in the Fujian/Guangdong border region, was provided by tulous. Tulous (Lit: earth houses) were built with a single entrance and walls up to 2m thick to provide safe homes for as many as 80 families. Tian Luoken is one of the 46 clusters making up the Fujian Tulou World Heritage Site.

Walking down to the Tian Luokeng Tulou Cluster, Fujian

Tulous are unique to Fujian and we first heard of them on a previous trip from Fujian tourism advertisements. We had expected them to be museums of the 'how life used to be' variety. We had never imagined tulous to be fully functioning, living communities, but they most certainly are.

Just one door for the whole Tulou, Tian Luokeng Tulou Cluster, Fujian

Inside The Tian Luokeng Tulous

We had a quick look inside the first one. Strangely reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Globe, the building is divided like a cake into vertical wedges, each family occupying a slice with a room on each floor.

Inside a tulou, Tian Luokeng Tulou Cluster, Fujian

Then we took a walk through the village to the next tulou.

Walking through the village to the next tulou

Tourists are usually confined to the ground floor, but as we were the only visitors and half the residents seemed to be S’s cousins, we had privileged access. Looking down from the first floor we could see the shrine and the well - all-important in the event of a siege. The central area, now concreted over, was formerly used for growing crops for such emergencies.

Looking down from the first floor, Tian Loukeng Tulou Cluster, Fujian

The rooms contained little more than a wooden bed and a rough mattress. There is no piped water so night-soil buckets stand outside each door and these are taken out to the fields every morning and the contents used as fertilizer. I would not want to carry a full bucket down the steep and difficult stairs!

Lynne among the night-soil buckets, Tian Luokeng Tulou Cluster, Fujian

We ventured onto the top floor, because we could…

Top floor, Tian Luokeng Tulou Cluster, Fujian

…and observed the ground floor where almost every family had a stand-pipe, a sink and a gas bottle.

Stand pipe, sink and gas bottle,Tian Luokeng Tulou Cluster, Fujian

Lunch in one of the Tian Luokeng Tulous

Many families use their ground floor rooms to feed visitors and they have had a communal menu printed in Chinese and English. S introduced us to our cook for the day…

Posing with the chef, Tian Luokeng Tulou Cluster, Fujian

…and with his help we chose autumn bamboo with pork, preserved vegetables with fatty pork and tofu buns with mushrooms. That sounds like too much pork, but autumn bamboo and preserved vegetables are typical seasonal dishes and S thought we should try both along with the stuffed tofu, another Hakka speciality. S ate with relatives while we were served with a feast in solitary splendour.

Our excellent lunch, Tian Loukeng Tulou Cluster, Fujian

Tulous may be round or square, but this cluster has only a single square one, and after our excellent lunch we went to see it. We were welcomed by one of S’s cousins who kindly gave us a passion fruit each from her stall.

S's smiley cousin in the square tulou, Tian Loukeng Tulou Cluster, Fujian

The square tulou is not really any different - except for the angle in the roof.

Inside the square tulou, Tian Luokeng Tulou Cluster, Fujian

Outside we watched the sole worker in the carefully terraced, night-soil fertilized November fields.

The sole worker in the night-soil fertilized fields, Tian Luokeng Tulou centre

Before taking a brief look in the oval tulou where the rains came down and the brollies went up.

Inside the wet oval tulou, Tian Luokeng Tulou Cluster, Fujian

We left the Tian Luokeng Cluster, pausing only to photograph the tulous from below....

The Tian Luokeng Tulou Cluster from below

The Yuchang Lou Tulou

...on our way to the Yuchang Lou Tulou, the biggest and oldest of them all and also the birthplace of S and his father.

Outside the Yuchang Lou Tulou, Fujian

Built in 1308, Yuchang Lou has five storeys and is so big its shrine is a tulou within the tulou.

The shrine, Yuchang Lou Tulou, Fujian

It is famous for the zigzag struts in the top two storeys. S called it ‘China’s leaning tower of Pisa’, but unlike the oft referred to tower, it does not actually lean and the design was at least semi-intentional; after a measuring error it was cheaper and easier to put the struts at a slant than cut a whole set of new ones. It looks worrying, but has been that way for 700 years and not fallen down yet.

Zigzag struts, Yuchang Lou Tulou, Fujian

Tea Tasting in the Yuchang Lou Tulou

Uniquely each ground floor room has its own well.

Every ground floor room has its own well, Yuchang Lou Tulou

Unsurprisingly one of them served as a tea shop and, equally unsurprisingly, it belonged to another cousin. S brewed up local black tea and then a more flowery potion for us to try.

S demonstrates his expertise

Then he let the amateur have a go.

Any idiot can pour tea

S informed us proudly that in its long history the tulou had often been attacked, but never taken and outside he showed us the hole made by the Japanese in 1938 before they gave up and went away. Letting cold reality intrude for a moment, we had seen what Japanese artillery had done to Nanjing’s mighty medieval fortifications, and if they had really wanted to take the tulou they could have blown it to bits in an hour. I suspect they felt they could afford to leave it and move on.

War damage, Yuchang Lou tulou, Fujian

The Village and Examination Successes of the Liu Clan

The Tulou does not exist in isolation and the village outside is inhabited by the same clan, the Liu.

The village outside the Yuchang Lou tulou, Fujian

Four ceremonial pillars stand outside the village temple. From the 9th century until 1905 entry to the civil service and its many lucrative positions was by competitive examination in Confucian principles (we visited a rebuilt examination centre in Nanjing). These examinations could be passed at County, Provincial or National Level and the pillars commemorate successful local candidates.

The examination successes of the Liu Clan

Taxia Village and More Examintion Successes

Following the river a couple of miles upstream brought us to Taxiacun (Taxia village), a large village where most of the building are 15th century tulous. All the façades on the left bank in the pictures below are the sides of rectangular tulous

On the bridge, Taxia, Fujian Province

It is a picturesque place, a Chinese Bourton-on-the-Water, and I am sure it looks lovely in the sunshine, but we were just happy the rain held off (mostly).

Taxia.
Fortunately the road is lined with cat's eyes - in the dark it would be easy to drive into the river

The Feud between the Liu of Yuchang Lou and the Zhang of Taxia

The Zhang clan of Taxia once had a feud (S called it a ‘war’) with the Liu of Yuchang Lou. A marriage had been arranged between a Zhang boy and a Liu girl but sadly, the girl died in an accident before the ceremony took place. Despite there being no wedding, the Zhang family demanded her dowry, a piece of land beside the Yuchang Lou tulou. The Liu found this unacceptable and violence followed. That is S’s version, and he is a Liu; maybe there is a slightly different Zhang version. The feud (or ‘war’) happened long ago, no one knows exactly when, but that does not mean it has been forgotten.

The Zhang temple has a magnificently fussy doorway in a land of fussy doorways. It features flowers, dragons and other mythical creatures, and what may or may not be a boat.

Temple Doorway, Taxia

The Zhang are more numerous than the Liu so they have a small forest of examination success pillars outside the temple beside a semi-circular pond.

Examination success pillars, Taxia

The time had come to return to Xiamen. It was a long way and the last part of the journey involved heavy traffic so we were not back in our hotel until 8.30. We spent two nights in Xiamen, but hardly saw the city as the next morning we made our way to the airport and then to Hong Kong…. from where the next series of posts will come.

At one point on this journey, in Hangzhou possibly, we were wondering if we had been to China too often and it was beginning to lose its fascination, but this trip kept the best to last. The tulous are unique, a still thriving link to a way of life so different from our own - for us easily the highlight of south east China.

South East China

Part 1: Nanjing (1) Sun Yat Sen, The Zhonghua Gate and Salt Water Duck
Part 2: Nanjing (2) The Presidential Palace and the Massacre Museum
Part 3: Suzhou (1) The 7-Mile Shantang and a Mandarin Fish Cut like a Squirrel
Part 4: Suzhou (2) The Humble Administrator's Garden and Other Gems
Part 5: Suzhou (3) the Lingering Garden and the City Gate
Part 6: Hangzhou (1) West Lake, Lingyin Temple and Longjing Tea
Part 7: Hangzhou (2) Nanxun Water Town and Statues in the Street
Part 8: Wuyishan (1) Xiamei Ancient Village
Part 9: Wuyishan (2) Bamboo Rafts and Tianyou Peak
Part 10: Xiamen and Gulangyu Island
Part 11: The Tulou of Fujian

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