The Fujian tulou () are Chinese rural dwellingsJoseph Needham, Science and civilization in China V4 pt3. p. 133-134, 1971 Cambridge University Press unique to the Hakka in the mountainous areas in southeastern Fujian, China. They were mostly built between the 12th and the 20th centuries.Fujian Tulou. UNESCO World Heritage Center
A tulou is usually a large, enclosed and fortified earth building, most commonly rectangular or circular in configuration, with very thick load-bearing rammed earth walls between three and five stories high and housing up to 800 people. Smaller interior buildings are often enclosed by these huge peripheral walls which can contain halls, storehouses, wells and living areas, the whole structure resembling a small fortified city.Earthen Houses (Tulou), Fujian Province Macau Cultural Affairs Bureau
The fortified outer structures are formed by compacting earth, mixed with stone, bamboo, wood and other readily available materials to form walls up to thick. Branches, strips of wood and bamboo chips are often laid in the wall as additional reinforcement. The result is a well-lit, well-ventilated, windproof and earthquake-proof building that is warm in winter and cool in summer. Tulous usually have only one main gate, guarded by wooden doors reinforced with an outer shell of iron plate. The top level of these earth buildings has gun holes for defensive purposes.
Most of the tulou (with the exception of the Dadi tulou cluster in Hua'an county) are found in a relatively small geographical area, straddling the boundary between the Yongding, Nanjing, and Pinghe counties of Fujian province. Some of tulous are also found in neighboring Guangdong province such as in eastern Dabu County of Meizhou. These are administered as a single tourist site (known as the Nanjing Tulou Scenic Area) with its entrance in Shuyang township (Nanjing County, Zhangzhou). Visits to this area therefore usually comprise a tour of the most distinctive and famous across both the "Yongding" (Gaobei Tulou cluster, Hongkeng Tulou cluster, Chuxi Tulou cluster, Zhenfulou Earthen House, and Yanxianglou Earthen House) and "Nanjing" (Tianluokeng Tulou cluster, Hekeng Tulou cluster, Heguilou Earthen House, and Huaiyuanlou Earthen House) tulou groups.
A total of 46 Fujian tulou sites were inscribed in 2008 by UNESCO as World Heritage Site, as "exceptional examples of a building tradition and function exemplifying a particular type of communal living and defensive organization [in a] harmonious relationship with their environment". The inscribed sites include Chuxi Tulou cluster, Tianluokeng Tulou cluster, Hekeng Tulou cluster, Gaobei Tulou cluster, Dadi Tulou cluster, Hongkeng Tulou cluster, Yangxian Lou, Huiyuan Lou, Zhengfu Lou, and Hegui Lou.
Terminology
Since the 1980s, the Fujian Tulou has been variously called "Hakka tulou", "earth dwelling", "round stronghouse" or simply "Tulou". Tu lou () literally translates as earthen structures. Fujian Tulous's literal translation is "Fujian earthen structures", and scholars of Chinese architecture have recently standardized the term Fujian Tulou.
Early publications on tulous (the first of which appeared in a journal of Nanjing Institute of Technology in 1957) talked about tulous as the homes of Hakka people, primarily in Yongding County of southwestern Fujian. However, by the 1980s a substantial amount of research was also published on the tulous of the Hakkas' neighbors, the Southern Fujian people (known in Chinese as the Minnan people). Those are primarily found in to the east of Yongding, in particular in Nanjing County and Pinghe County of southeastern Fujian.
Parts of Hakka tulou belong to the Fujian Tulou category. While all south Fujian tulous belong to the Fujian Tulou category, they do not belong to "Hakka Tulou". In effect, "Fujian Tulou" is not a synonym for "tulou", but rather a special subgroup of the latter. There are more than 20,000 tulous in Fujian, while there are only around three thousand "Fujian Tulou" located in the southwestern region. Fujian Tulou is however the official name adopted by UNESCO for all dwellings of this type.
Based on the literal meaning of the Chinese words tu (土; "earth") and lou (樓; "[tall] building"), one may think of the term "tulou" as a generic description of a rammed-earth building. However, this would not be a useful definition, since, as the scholar of China's traditional architecture Huang Hanmin notes, rammed-earth building of one kind or another can be found in virtually all parts of China. Instead, it is preferable to use the definition actually used in Fujian: a tulou is a large building, constructed with load-bearing rammed earth walls, and used as a residence by a community (a group of families). (Chapter 3, Definition of the Fujian Tulou Concept) The first part of the definition contrasts tulous with structures that merely use rammed earth around the load-bearing wooden frame; the second part distinguishes tulous from small, single-family residencies.
Based on the above definition, Huang Hanmin believes that out of the great variety of rammed-earth vernacular architecture of China, only the following regional styles, all associated with either Hakka or Minnan people, can be called "tulou" (at least in Chinese):. The nomination restricts the term tulou to these 3 provinces. Quote: "In the southeastern Chinese provinces of Fujian, Jiangxi and Guangdong, there exist a lot of buildings with a long history called 'Tulou'." "Guangdong tulou": the weilongwu () compounds of the northern Guangdong, and the fortified weiwu () compounds of the northeastern Guangdong; "Jiangxi tulou": the tuweizi () compounds of the southern Jiangxi;These are described as weiwu (圍屋) or wei (圍) in: Chen Liang, Another cluster of Tulou in Longnan of Jiangxi bordering Fujian . China Daily. Published on www.whatsonxiamen.com on 2008-07-19 "Fujian tulou": several types of tulou of southern Fujian. While the Guangdong and Jiangxi tulous are associated with the Hakka people, among the Fujian tulou there are several types, some of which are characteristic of the Hakka, and others, of the Minnan.
For the Fujian Tulou specifically, Huang Hanmin gives the following definition: "A large multi-story building in southeast Fujian mountainous region for large community living and defense, built with weight bearing rammed earth wall and wood frame structure." (Chapter 3, Definition of Fujian Tulou Concept)
Notable Fujian tulou Chuxi Tulou cluster
Chuxi Tulou cluster (), located in Yongding County, Xiayang township, Chuxi village. Inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage site 1113-001. Jiqinglou, the largest round tulou, and also the oldest in this cluster, was built in 1419 during the reign of the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty. It consists of two concentric rings, the outer ring building is four stories tall, with 53 rooms on each level. The outer ring has 72 staircases. The second ring is a one-story building.
Zhencheng Lou
Zhenchenglou (), nicknamed "the prince of tulou", belongs to Hongkeng Tulou cluster. It is located in Hongkeng village, Hukeng township of Yongding County and was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage 1113-002. It was built in 1912 by the descendants of a rich tobacco merchant. Zhenchenglou is a double ring tulou, its outer ring being four stories high with a total of 184 rooms, the inner ring having two stories with 32 rooms. The outer ring was partitioned into four segments according to the Bagua concept of Chinese Fengshui.
Western influence is evident in the Greek style columns of the ancestral hall, and in the wrought iron railing of the second level corridor.
Chengqi Lou
Chengqilou () nicknamed "the king of tulou", of Gaobei Tulou cluster () at Gaobei Village (Gaotou Township) of Yongding County was built in 1709, and was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site 1113-003 in 2008. It is a massive round tulou with four concentric rings surrounding an ancestral hall at the center, the outer ring measuring 62.6 meters in diameter and being four stories tall, containing 288 rooms, with 72 rooms on each level, along with a circular corridor on the 2nd to 4th floors, with four sets of staircases at cardinal points connecting the ground to the top floors. A large outward-extending roof covers the main ring. The ground floor rooms serve as kitchens for family branches, the second level rooms serve as grain storage rooms, and the 3rd and 4th floor rooms are living quarters and bedrooms. The second ring of 80 rooms is two stories high, with 40 rooms on each level, the third ring serving as a community library, measuring a story with 32 rooms. There are 370 rooms in total. The 4th ring is a circular-covered corridor surrounding the ancestral hall. If a person stayed for one night in each room, it would take him more than a year to go through all the rooms.Huang Hanmin Fujian Tulou, chapter 5, most peculiar tulou in Fujian (in Chinese) The ancestral hall is at the center. Chengqilou has two main gates and two side gates. The 15th-generation Jiang clan with 57 families and 300 people live here. At its heyday, there were more than 80 family branches living in Chengqilou.
Other buildings in this cluster include: a three-ring Shenyuanlou with an outer ring 70 meters in diameter, a Wujiaolou (pentagon) with an irregular pentagonal floor plan, and a rectangular tulou, the Shi-Ze Lou.
Tianluokeng Tulou cluster
Tianluokeng Tulou cluster () is tulou quintet cluster located at Fujian province, Zhangzhou City, Nanjing County, Shuyang Township, Tian Luo Keng Village (literally "Snail Pit" Village) in southern China, about four hours drive by motor coach or taxi from Xiamen, through winding and bumpy narrow mountain roads. It consists of five tulous with a square "Buyunlou" at the center, surrounded by three rotunda tulous and an oval tulou, forming a pattern of "four dishes and a soup" (四菜一湯). The five earth buildings at the Snail Pit village are: The square Buyunlou (Reaching the Cloud building) at the center of the quincunx. It was the first tulou at this site, built in 1796. It is three stories high, each story has 26 rooms, four sets of stairs, and a go around corridor in front of the rooms at each level. The Buyun building was burnt down by bandits in 1936, rebuilt in 1953 according to the original plan. The Hechang building, a three-story-high round earth building, Zhenchang building, three stories, round shape, 26 rooms per story, built in 1930 Ruiyun building, built in 1936, three stories, 26 rooms per floor. The oval shape Wenchang building of 1966, three stories, 32 rooms per floor.
Yuchang Lou
Yuchanglou () is a five-story tulou located at Nanjing County, Shuyang Town, Xiabanliao Village. It was built in 1308 Yuan dynasty by the Liu family clan. It is one of the oldest and tallest tulou in China. Yuchanglou has been nicknamed the "zigzag building", because the vertical wooden post structure is not straight and perpendicular, but zigzags left and right. It was built that way due to an error measuring the building materials. But in spite of this apparent infirmity, this tall tulou withstood 700 years of natural elements and social turmoil. Yuchanglou's outer ring is 36 m in diameter and boasts five stories, with 50 rooms on each floor, 270 in total.
Each of the 25 kitchens on the ground floor at the back half of the circle has a private water well beside its stove. This is the only tulou in all Fujian with such convenient water supply.
There was a one-story inner-ring house surrounding the ancestral hall as late as 2003. This part of the building stood intact for nearly 700 years until it was dismantled after 2003.When Huang Hanmin's book was published in 2003, the inner ring was still intact. My photograph of 2007 clearly showed the foundation of the dismantled inner ring.
Eryilou