For our last trip before we leave Beijing in July, we are going to the Southeast of China in Fuxian Province just across the bay from Taiwan.
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| The obligatory location map! |
We are going to Xiamen to see the earthen buildings (土楼 - Tu Lou) of Hakkas people. Hakkas houses have been inscribed in 2008 by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site
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A little (big?) explanation of what TuLou are:
The buildings are usually round in shape and ranked from small ones, 2 or 3 stories tall with a single ring (12 to 28 rooms) to medium ones with 3 or 4 stories (up to 40 rooms) with a large inner open space and large buildings usually 4 to 5 stories tall and as many as three rings and up to 72 rooms.
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Two-third of the round buildings are 3 stories high and hold roughly 20 families or 100 people. The round earth building is a "group-oriented" residence, usually with one main entrance. Its wall is around 1 meter thick. The main entrance door is padded with iron sheet and is locked by 2 horizontal wood bars that retract into the walls in order to open the door. Inside the entrance is a huge central courtyard where all the doors of the rooms and inner windows are open to.
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At the ground level the rooms are used as kitchens and dining rooms. The rooms on the second floor are used for storage. The rooms on the 3rd level are used as bedrooms. The rooms in each level are identical. In front of each room, there is an open round hallway and usually there are 4 staircases to move from one level to another. Thus each family occupies one vertical unit.
A typical room is about 10-15 square meters in size. The windows facing outside tend to be small, with the window size at the outer wall smaller and the window size at the inner wall larger enabling wider surveillance from the inside. There is usually no window at the ground level.
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The Little Story behind the big Story!
Apparently in 1985 a Western intelligence report claimed a surveillance satellite had detected a nuclear base in the southern part of China’s Fujian province. The base was ostensibly housed in clusters of large, mushroom-shaped structures that the satellite could not identify or penetrate. Some US military liaison officers stationed at the American Embassy in Beijing were sent down to Yongding to investigate. They found to their relief and embarrassment that what they thought were nuclear reactors or missile silos were in fact harmless earth buildings where the Hakkas had been living for centuries!
Since the discovery of the earth buildings by the American satellite, word of these unique buildings began to spread far and wide, resulting in thousands of tourists from all over the world coming to Fujian to take a look at the buildings.
We also visited Gulangyu island (鼓浪屿), a 10 minutes boat ride from Xiamen. It’s a tranquil island with attractive colonial buildings. Only electric-powered vehicles are permitted on the island so it is free from noise and pollution (a big change in China!). After the Opium War in 1842, 13 countries including Great Britain, France and Japan established consulates, churches and hospital, turning the island into a common concession. The narrow streets on the island, together with the European –style architecture, give the island a unique appearance.
Gulangyu is not only famous for its architecture but also apparently for hosting China’s only piano museum. There are over 200 pianos on the island (of 1 km²). The tiny community of 20,000 has more piano per capita than enywhere else on the planet –hence Gulanyu’s nickmane “Piano Isle”
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