Some people go to Fujian for its rich seafood cuisine. Others visit for the old-world charm of the colonial treaty port of Xiamen. But the southeastern costal province’s best-known icon is perhaps the tulou. These typically round structures first gained fame when US satellites mistakenly identified them as missile silos in the 1980s. Covert American operatives later learned that, in actual fact, the tulous were simply giant, circular homes with open, inner courtyards, built by the Hakka people between the 12th and 20th centuries.
These days, you don’t have to be in the secret service to observe them – many are open for viewing or even as holiday accommodation. They’re not nuclear facilities, but anyone seeing the tulous up close for the first time can’t fail to be inspired with an earth-shattering sense of awe. Their size alone is impressive, with some measuring over 80m in diameter and rising up to five storeys high. With only one singular arched entrance, narrow slit windows and 2m-thick walls rammed with a mixture of earth, glutinous rice and bamboo, it is easy to see that these medieval homes were designed not just to live in, but also as fortification to keep out wild animals, bandits and other warring tribes.
Step inside a typical tulou and you’ll find an entire town within the round earthen walls. Wooden the round earthen walls. Wooden balconies face inwards towards an open central courtyard and give off an appearance not dissimilar from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. But here, instead of a stage, the bottom floor contains kitchens, wells and storehouses stockpiled with food – in the past, sieges meant that an individual tulou community had to be able to survive without leaving the walls for months at a time. Upstairs, instead of seats for the audience, there are floors of ringed wooden galleries with grey tiles to keep out the rain. Leading off from these galleries are rooms that act as living quarters for up to 80 families, all sharing the same surname and belonging to one clan. Spiritual matters are attended to in the family shrine.
Tens of thousands of tulous are scattered across Fujian, but you’ll find the main collection concentrated in Yongding County. Buses taking three hours run regularly from Xiamen’s long-distance bus station to Zhengcheng Lou, in Hukeng village. This particular cluster, known as the ‘Prince of Tulou’, was built in 1912. If you’d like to get out to less touristy, older examples, it is easy to hire a driver (from 400RMB, depending on distance) or a motorcycle for the day (from 60RMB, depending on distance) from local villagers.
Many of these rustic fortresses have empty rooms, and accommodation overnight can often be negotiated with the locals. Or for hotel-standard tulou lodgings, book a room at the Fuyulou Chandi Inn (134 5920 1096; fuyulouhotel@hotmail.com) in Hukeng. For an easy time of things, consider travelling with Apple Travel (400 885 8807; apple@appletravel.cn). This company can arrange tailor-made, private one-day or two-day trips priced at 1,500RMB and 2,000RMB respectively, as well as group tours starting from 395RMB per person, depending on the size of the party. This includes all entrance fees, Hakka-style meals and local English-speaking tour guides.
Of course, as more and more young residents move to the cities, and tourism picks up in the region, the traditional way of tulou life is dying out. In some of the larger buildings, surviving residents now make a living by putting on bazaars in the courtyards, hawking curios, photographs and drawings of the buildings and the surrounding countryside. However, in some of the tulous, glimpses of practices unchanged through the centuries can still be seen: children play with animals and scamper between stalls in the interior courtyard, while old women separate out tea buds and nod to farmers coming back from a day at work in the fields. It is vignettes like these that make the trip out to Yongding all the more worthwhile.
Essential info Air China (www.airchina.com.cn) operates daily services from Beijing to Xiamen’s Gaoqi Airport from 2,400RMB return, including tax, for the three-hour flight. return, including tax, for the three-hour flight.