The Tulou of Fujian Province

Fascinating piece, PortMoresby!  Truly a stranger in a strange (but fascinating) lang.

Thanks for sharing it with us!

 Thanks PortMoresby!

Do you remember where you saw the original

Photo.Glad to hear the adventurous spirit is alive and well.

No, Rob.  Sorry, I don't remember.  I read a lot of publications, online and off, and the original picture got lost in the dust of enthusiasm to research logistics.  I don't think there's any lack of enthusiasm in the world but that obscure places are getting less obscure every day.  What I do think is lacking is imagination.  We tend to read about places people have enjoyed, as here on TravelGumbo and follow, rather than setting out for parts unknown.  I believe if a place is hard to get to it has much more chance of surprising us.  I'm sure short vacation time and fear of the unknown both have their effects which can be a good thing.  More for likes of me to enjoy on my own.

I'm amazed at seeing this. At first I was thinking, well, communal dwelling, sort of like pueblos, and then I realized that this is much bigger, since you said there are hundreds of these. Do you know if they are in other areas of China, too? Are people still building like that now? 

Sisyphus, not to nit-pick, but thousands of them according to everything I've read, not hundreds.  They're built by the Hakka people so confined to Fujian and neighboring provinces.  I suspect there may not be many under construction as efforts seem to be going toward maintaining the ones standing.  When I was walking through the clusters I visited there were a few abandoned and in disrepair but not many, at least that I saw.  There very well may be more unmaintained in remoter areas.  Young people, as in many traditional communities, are moving away and some older residents, while living nearby, prefer new apartment blocks with convenience not found in the tulou.

These are living communities.  A few have been abandoned in favor of apartment blocks and are melting back into the earth, as mud-brick construction does, but most of the thousands scattered through the hills of the province continue to be villages in themselves, enjoyed and maintained by the Hakka communities that occupy them.  A few of the largest individual tulous and clusters have become tourist attractions but if you hurry you'll likely be, as I was, one of the only western tourists for miles.

Amazing!!

As you said, ahead of the crowd.....what an adventure!

Thanks, Dgems.  When I wrote this piece, last year, I didn't have access to my own photos.  In the next month or so I plan to post a gallery of my own pictures of the tulou so you'll have a better idea of the variety of structures and ambiance of the area.

Thank you for bringing us back these wonderful photos of a secret splendor. (I still want to know what happened to you without easy communication. Those are the moments that challenge and expand us, and they must have for you. )

HistoryDigger, I'll explain.  At the end of the first day of tulou visits, the large tour bus rendezvoused with a small van and it was indicated that I should bring my things and come with a young man.  Since no one could explain, I had to simply trust and go along, an interesting sensation.  I later realized that I was the only one who had opted for the second day.  

The young man drove me to a very basic village of mostly new buildings built, I suspect but of course don't know, for accommodating the growing domestic tourist interest in the area.  He showed me into one of the buildings, concrete and several stories high, his family's home and business, a hotel.  I've stayed in some very basic accommodations before but had never experienced a place like this one, both fairly new and also run down and depressing.  I was taken to one room which was bad, then another which was worse, the curtains torn and hanging, the sink in the bathroom had water coming in and also going out, all over the floor, among other glaring deficiencies.  To make matters far worse, there was a central stair well which seemed to amplify sound coming from the ground floor and the young man's shrew of a wife screaming incessantly at their small child.  I determined after a time that I couldn't stay. But how to leave?

I tried to communicate with the unpleasant woman, my supposed hostess, who led me to understand that there was no way to leave the village, no bus or taxi.  I seemed to be stuck.  I'd finally had enough and did what every sensible stranger in a strange land does, burst into tears.  To my complete surprise, though not a ploy by any means, it worked, keep it in mind for future travels.  She got on the phone immediately, I was told to get my things, and I was taken around the corner to another hotel which was perfectly comfortable, with a kind older couple as proprietors.  Interestingly, I seemed to be the only guest at both hotels.

I spent was was left of the afternoon sitting on a bench alongside the road, an attraction myself as the passing traffic, mostly on foot and bicycles, did double takes.  I had dinner, cooked by the kind hostess, and in the morning was shown back to the Shrew Hotel for breakfast.  The young man was my surly guide for the 2nd day, I pretended not to notice, had a fine time among the tulou before being taken back to the rendezvous point and returned to Xiamen in one of the larger buses.

That, as Paul Harvey used to say, is the rest of the story.