Half way through our stay in Xiamen we took a day out to visit and spend a night in a Tulou in rural Fujian.
Tulous - also called Hakkas after the Hakka minority they once housed - are essentially huge huts made of wood and mud which, for hundreds of years, have housed entire villages. They come in various shapes (square, oval, circle) and various sizes (from one floor to towering 7 floor structures) but no matter what they look like they are always impressive. The province of Fujian's countryside is littered with clusters of Tulous and are a popular trip for Chinese tourists to make.
We had decided to visit the Hongkeng Tulou cluster （哄坑土楼群）, mainly because my guide book recommended one of the Tulous in it for it's accomodation and English speaking owner. Booking accomodation was easy enough and the son of a family who live in the Fuyu （福楼） Tulou, Stephen, said he'd meet us at the Tulou bus stop. Perfect.
After a hair raising journey on a motorbike with a Chinese girl and an old man to buy tickets to the Tulou cluster, we arrived at our home for the night with fairly little stress - if you of not my panic that I was going to die at the hands of a frail old motorcyclist.
From the outside the Tulou are impressive and we spent the day we arrived wandering around the cluster and pretty much peering into people's homes - a fantastic afternoon for a nosey Parker such as myself! That's the weird thing about the Tulous, they are still communities with families living in them. There's an odd contrast between the feeling that you are just walking into a random family's home, and the masses of tour groups and stalls selling touristic tat.
Some Tulous were more impressive than others; some were very much preserved and functioning for the sake of tourists [2nd picture just above] , others were almost dilapidated and very much an insight into a disappearing way of life [1st picture just above].
The whole trip was a fantastic insight into yet another side of China and the two days wandering around the cluster were relaxing and good fun. I'm really glad we visited the Fujian Tulou because they are unique to the area and are really unlike anything I've ever seen before. It was definitely a huge contrast returning to the hustle and bustle of Xiamen!
Fujian Tulou: 8/10
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