Hakka Tulou, a small introduction

[kavino]

Looking at this section of the forum all I see are posts about western history. Let me do something different. This does not belong to travel lodge because I have never seen a tulou in person.

Tulou is a type of residential building, meaning "earthen building", built by the Hakka people after their migration. They are either circular or square, multi-layered, and looks like an UFO. The walls are made from a mixture of mud, sand, clay, and I read that there are even sticky rice powder mixed in.

The Hakka were originally Han Chinese (there are other theories, but this is the commonly accepted one) from Northern China who started to migrate to the South around 10th century, possibly due to the turmoil during the late Tang dynasty. Due to competition for resources the Hakka had to protect themselves from frequent raidings of the locals, thus they build the Tulou, fortress like in their nature, as their habitat.

Tulou usually house an entire clan and the residents are all quite familiar with each other.

Pictures
exterior
interior
a tulou from Yongdian county in Fujian

[bushbush]

beautiful pics. +rep

[removeduser_052420]

Holy cow, that last pic was quite the stunner.

[bushbush]

Holy cow, that last pic was quite the stunner.

ya regional architecture is a really fun subject when you study china.

in northern china, big families' houses are even more impressive. The powerful local clans had huge compounds.

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attr...resident_2.htm
that's one of them. At the end of that page, it can link you to other famous compounds in Shanxi province. (similar style). Some pictures:









this is the dominant style of Shanxi province clan compounds. In other regions it is different too (you see hakka 's already). Shanxi compounds are generally known for its gigantic size and fabulous workmanship in details. The downside of them is that they are known to have nice gardens like southern chinese clan compounds, mainly due to climate differences.