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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Xiamen and Gulangyu Island:South East China Part 10

An Island City, Now a Coastal Metropolis, and a Smaller Island that was Once British Controlled

Wuyishan to Xiamen

China

Our return to Wuyishan station was another white-knuckle ride as our driver overtook on a blind bend, conversed on his phone and read a text. We sat in the back and filled out the evaluation form, commenting at length on his cavalier attitude to life and limb and more succinctly on M’s lack of English, while praising both for their punctuality. As usual there was no envelope, but I doubt M’s English was good enough for her to spot the need to lose the form between the station and her office. This is, I should add, untypical of the service we have received on this and previous Chinese visits.

Wuyishan station may be a cavernous concrete barn in the middle of nowhere, but it was the terminus for our high-speed train to Xiamen. The 3½ hour, 500km journey took us cross-country to Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian Province and then down the heavily populated coastal strip to Xiamen North Railway Station.

The final stage of our two week journey from Nanjing was from Wuyishan to Xiamen

While Wuyishan, indeed most of inland Fujian, is relatively lightly populated, the coastal strip is another matter. Overall Fujian’s 35m inhabitants live at a density of 300 per km², comparable to the UK’s 270, and positively rural compared with Zhejiang (55m at 550 per km²) and Jiangsu (80m at 780 per km²). South East China certainly packs in the crowds.

We experienced a little difficulty locating our new guide, but once we realised the station had two exits, the problem was solved. S was young, enthusiastic and spoke good English, I could see at once that Lynne would quickly adopt him as a temporary son.

Into Xiamen, Formerly 'Amoy'

Xiamen (formerly known in English, and still on soy sauce bottles, as Amoy) was once a city on an island, the original settlement being on the south side in what is now the District of Siming. The island is 12km across and home to 1.8m people. Almost as many again live on the surrounding arc of the mainland giving the ‘Sub-Provincial City’ of Xiamen a population of 3½m.

Xiamen Island and the surrounding districts that make up the 'Sub-Provincial City' of Xiamen

Happier now we were with a safer, more professional, driver we headed south from Xiamen North Station, crossed the causeway (or perhaps one of the many bridges) onto the Island and proceeded towards its south-west corner.

Xiamen Island

Xiamen was a late developer, by Chinese standards, only emerging as a port during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). First European contact was made by the Portuguese in 1541 and the Dutch soon followed. After the Qing dynasty supplanted the Ming in 1644, Ming loyalists hung on here at the empire’s southern extremity for 20 years before the city finally succumbed to a combined Qing/Dutch force. The British East India Company built their first factory in 1684 but draconian restrictions eventually forced foreigners to give up all trading posts except Canton (now called Guangzhou). Although morally indefensible, the First Opium War (1839-42) was a British military and commercial triumph. Taking Xiamen in 1841, they decided the island was too big to garrison so held on only to Gulangyu Island, just off the south west coast. The war ended with the Treaty of Nanjing, which ceded Hong Kong to the British and gave them access to five ports, including Xiamen. From their base on Gulangyu the British and later other foreign traders would help Xiamen become China’s richest port.

Gulangyu Island

The Gulangyu Ferry

Xiamen’s sizeable ferry terminal was crowded with well marshalled queues of people bound for a dozen different destinations. Gulangyu is a Chinese Tourist Board 5A rated attraction and receives 10 million visitors a year [as of July 2017 it is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site so international tourists are now expected to increase]. Although only a couple of hundred metres offshore numbers are such that we boarded a ship rather than a boat to cross the narrow channel.

Leaving the ferry port, Xiamen Island

Gulangyu looked tranquil and low-rise….

Approaching Gulangyu Island

Traffic Free Gulangyu

… and felt pleasantly warm; we were now far enough south to have not even brought our sweaters from the car. The problem with a sub-tropical humid climate, though, is that it may be warm, but rain is never far away.

On Gulangyu Island

Not only is Gulangyu low-rise, it is traffic free, there are no cars, motorcycles or even bicycles. A few electric buggies are used by government workers, but otherwise if anything needs moving, then muscle power will move it.

How stuff gets moved, Gulangyu Island, Xiamen

History has endowed Gulangyu with a wealth of colonial architecture. It was now nearly three and lunch was beginning to feel seriously overdue, but first S wanted to show us the former British Consulate. ‘British architecture,’ he said, ‘make you feel at home.’ ‘There,’ he said as we rounded the corner. ‘Where?’ we asked, ‘There, the British building.’ He seemed disappointed with our reaction.

The former British Consulate, Gulangyu Island
Are Moorish windows typically British? No, I thought not.

Gulangyu Lunch

Finally, S agreed that it was time to eat. ‘Local food,’ we said and he took us to a small apparently basic restaurant which was, at 3pm, quite empty. Unable to read the menu we asked S to choose something appropriate and he selected fish balls and seaweed followed by a noodle soup which contained more prawns and pieces of squid than noodles. To our surprise a big gloop of satay sauce sat in the spicy soup, not quite mingling with it. Most Chinese citizens of Malaysia and Indonesia have family origins in Fujian; as people have moved back and forth so has their food and Fujian has adopted satay as its own.

The meal was excellent and filling if rather expensive. Humans are traditionally reluctant to share their food with rodents and we considered requesting a discount after a fat, self-satisfied looking mouse waddled across the counter. We had finished eating, so why worry - and we came to no harm.

Gulangyu Churches and Other Oddities

Returning to the traffic free, though still fairly crowded, streets of Gulangyu we saw more examples of colonial architecture. A neo-classical church….

Neo-classical Church, Gulangyu Island, Xiamen

…and another church, a pastiche of every other European church,…

Another Church, Gulangyu Island, Xiamen

and some apartments in a style best described as Hanoi Palladian.

Unusual looking apartments, Gulangyu, Xiamen

Typhoon Meranti, the strongest typhoon ever to have struck Fujian, passed over Xiamen in September. Five weeks later most of the damage had been cleared up, but not all.

Legacy of Typhoon Meranti, Gulangyu Island, Xiamen

Lin Family Mansion and Garden

The light drizzle had ceased before we reached Shuzhuang Garden, often called the Lin Family Mansion and Garden as it is the creation of Taiwanese businessman Lin Erjia who, according to China Highlights ‘donated it to the state government in the 1950s’. That might be an idiosyncratic use of the word ‘donated’.

Entrance to the Shuzhuang Garden Gulangyu Island, Xiamen

China Highlights also quotes some technical stuff about the combination of three gardening techniques, ‘hiding elements, borrowing from the environment and combing movements.’ I do not pretend to understand that, nor how this creates 'a feeling of infinite space’, but it is a delightful place and much less crowded than we had expected.

Shuzhuang Garden, Gulangyu, Xiamen
It is delightful place, which may be the thought of the gardener as he sits admiring his handiwork

The ‘Garden of Adding Hills’ (the back, right of the above photo) allows you to look down in the main section (‘the Garden of Hiding the Sea’), …

Shuzhuang Garden, Gulangyu Island,Xiamen

...the Lin Family Mansion....

The Lin Family Mansion, Shuzhuang Garden, Gulangyu Island, Xiamen

…and the seaside part of the garden.

Seaside section of the Shuzhuang Garden, Gulangyu Island, Xiamen

….where we decided to walk next.

The sun comes out, the rain dries up and all is warm and beautiful, Shuxhuang Garden, Gulangyu Island, Xiamen

The Piano Museum

The long exposure of Gulangyu to foreign influences, in particular western classical music, has had a profound effect. It is known as the Island of Pianos and claims to have more pianos per head than anywhere else in China (but how can they know?) It remains unclear if this calculation includes the inmates of the piano museum next to the garden.

The collection of the Gulangyu born Australian-Chinese pianist Hu Youyi is open to the public. I know little about pianos and had never visited a piano museum before, but when in Gulangyu….

It was surprisingly interesting. We saw pianos with famous names, Steinway, Bechstein and others, the world’s largest upright piano, a piano that once belonged to the German royal family and the world’s oldest rectangular piano. There were oddities, too, a piano with one half of the key board and strings at right angles to the other so that it fitted into the corner of a room and a piano with eight pedals (soft, loud, wah wah, fuzz box, accelerator, brake, clutch and gin-and-tonic?). Sadly, photographs were not allowed.

Back to Xiamen

As we, and many other visitors, made the walk back to the ferry port rain started to fall. We raised our umbrella as it became harder and very soon the streets were awash with running water. By the time we reached the terminal it was hammering down, but an officious security man, standing sheltered beneath an awning, made everybody wait in a long queue as he carefully checked all documents. The queue bunched up, attempting to crowd under the awning, umbrellas keeping heads dry while sluicing torrents of water down neighbours’ legs.

We were distinctly damp by the time we found our way into the holding pen. It was only a short wait for the bumpy ferry ride, but by the time we arrived the rain had gone and darkness had fallen.

Waiting for the ferry, Gulangyu Island, Xiamen

According to our original itinerary we should also have visited the 19th century Hulishan Fortress. It was no great loss, but from the heights we might have seen the Kinmen Islands. Although the shortest distance from Lesser Kinmen to Xiamen is only 4km, it is part of the Republic of China not the People’s Republic of China, and the Kinmens are administered from Taiwan, 200km away. Kinmen was repeatedly shelled in the 1950s, and the islands were under military rule until the mid-90s, but tensions have eased and there is now substantial tourist and commercial travel between the mainland and Kinmen where the economy and population, now 130,000 strong, are booming.

I thought you might want to refer to the map again, I'm thoughtful like that

Our Xiamen Hotel

Our hotel was a tower block in a residential estate of such blocks, indeed its original purpose seemed to have been residential too, as we had a kitchen (equipped only with a kettle) as well as a bathroom. We sat on the enclosed balcony drinking tea and eating the mooncakes S had given us as a welcome present. Very few windows in the other blocks were lit up. These structures have been thrown up by the thousand in cities all over China. I struggle to see how they function as investments when most appear largely empty, but after more than a decade the building boom shows no sign of abating.

We were still too full of lunch to think about dinner, so we ate some peanuts and enjoyed a dram or two of the firewater we had bought in Hangzhou.

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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