Bandits and wild beasts: long ago they were rampant in Fujian Province and as the arriving Hakka (“guest people”) settled there, they protected themselves by building huge rammed-earth and timber structures for communal living. Virtually unknown in the West, these tulou are magnificent structures, deservedly recognised by their UNESCO world heritage status. The days of possible attacks by bears and tigers are long gone but most of the 20,000 or so tulou in the west Fujian counties of Nanjing and Yongding survive, and are still inhabited.
Quite distinct from the fortified diaolou mansions of Kaiping in Guangdong Province, the tulou are much bigger – and much older.
From Macau, the best way to see them is to fly to Xiamen (two carriers operate direct flights), stay overnight there and travel overland. You can hire a car and driver from Xiamen but this is not cheap and there are many bus tours. If as I did, you choose the latter, you need to take your four-day luggage on day-trip tour buses. I often got separated from my cabin bag, trusting that the days of highwaymen have passed along with the bears.
My bus sets off from the hotel after breakfast and two hours later the flat banana fields give way to stands of bamboo and valleys of terraced vegetable plots. Here I see my first tulou, sitting on the edge of a nondescript village and looking a bit worse for wear. Real tulou country lies ahead and the bus grinds on until an enormous modern tourist centre looms into view, its design a 21st century version of a tulou segment, but in concrete.
I’m keen to see the real buildings and fear being trapped into lectures by flag-waving guides with loudhailers, but we drive past and pull up outside a modest restaurant instead. I give thanks for deliverance from the megaphones and, less keenly, for the indeterminate meat and boiled vegetables that are served up with rice.
We get under way again and the bus climbs to higher reaches where neatly trimmed hedges of tea curve along the terraces. Orchards of pomelo trees heavy with fruit cling to the slopes.
We arrive at possibly the most photographed cluster of tulou, Tianluokeng, with its “four bowls and a soup” grouping, luckily all visible from the neighbouring hillside. Our guide, whom I name not very correctly as Birdie, insists on dragging my cabin bag down a rocky path until she disappears ahead when I stop for photos.
Back on the bus, it’s a short ride to Yuchanglou which boasts a derelict square tulou and a large occupied round one, said to be 700 years old and therefore Yuan dynasty, its interior timber columns at crazy angles. Deflections occurred shortly after construction and don’t appear to concern the Liu clan residents. The path, nicely laid granite slabs (a hallmark of UNESCO world heritage status, I discover) runs by a stream that laces through the village. Every abutting square metre is taken up by trinket stalls; the tulou may be unknown in the West, but there are hordes of local visitors.
The next bus provides a reassuring reunion with my cabin bag and takes me to Taxia village, my overnight stop. Birdie tells me that the tulou “hotel”, of which I harbour low comfort expectations, seems to have two addresses and she yells into her phone for several minutes on this subject. I’m the only Caucasian on the bus and the only person not returning to Xiamen that day, for which I’m grateful, having had enough of buses for now. Birdie and I trundle along a dusty lane to what looks suspiciously like a tea shop, but I’m assured this is the hotel.
Taxia is strung along a river and is thick with tulou. I once more desert my cabin bag and a golf cart takes groups of us down the granite trail to the village centre. Young locals riding three to a scooter follow, all keen to see the gwai lo. Wonderful old buildings overlook the river, and further downstream a temple sits below a grassy tree-topped knoll. It’s all very picturesque.
For a handful of change, another golf cart returns me to the tea house and it transpires that my room is not here, though fortunately my luggage is. Now I embark on another not yet experienced mode of transport on the trip – motorbike. Cabin bag and I travel by separate bikes in a hair-raising, hooter-blaring ride to the tulou hotel, called Wei Qun Lou, where the room costs MOP133.
This tulou is round and has an open-cobbled courtyard with two wells and a dozen plump chickens. The proprietor proudly brews up some local tea in his meagre office, which I gratefully take. It’s been a dusty day and Xiamen seems far away. The small guestroom has electricity, clean bedding and zero traffic noise. What more could you ask for at this price?
Next morning there is confusion over the next leg of my trip and Birdie tells me over the phone to report to the local bus park. While the chickens are being slaughtered, I negotiate my cabin bag across the cobbles and set off down the granite. There’s no bus going to my next destination, Hukeng Town but rescue comes in the form of a taxi, who for MOP80 delivers me at a crossroads.
This is the least scenic spot in China and time drags while scores of buses scream past, horns blaring. One stops briefly and I notice it has the obscure message ‘ECIVRES TSIRUOT’ along its side. The Chinese signwriter has laboriously copied out the correct message on the opposite side of the vehicle, reversing the order of the letters, believing it to be legible. Miraculously, another bus stops and who should be on it but Birdie, presumably straight from Xiamen. I get on, the only Caucasian again.
Though consumed in a half-finished industrial building, today’s lunch turns out to be tastier than yesterday’s, and duly fed, my new travelling companions and I are driven to a modern tourist centre easily confused with yesterday’s. I part company again with my luggage and I’m introduced to Mr Lin on whose motorbike pillion I speed through Hukeng town and skid to a stop in front of the Fuyu Building Changdi Inn, where I shall stay the night for MOP155. We are in Hongkeng village.
It’s the ageing biker’s son Stephen Lin who runs the inn, a glorious mansion built by his great, great, great grandfather in 1880, with a lavishly decorated series of interior pavilions, their centrepiece a lofty ancestral hall. There are people everywhere and it’s hard to distinguish family, inn staff and visitors. Laundered bedsheets hang out to dry in the courtyard.
Hongkeng village is a mix of the foursquare and the rotund; tulou are scattered all around the river but Fuyu seems to represent communality at an elevated level. Was the 1880 Mr Lin an enlightened patron, keen to dignify his family and servants or is the building merely an egotistical celebration of his wealth and grandeur? It’s certainly a contrast with Rusheng Lou over the river, a modest pillbox at a mere 23 metres in diameter.
Next morning the sheets have been gathered and the front court, facing due east over the river, is covered with large mats of rice drying in the sun. There’s other local produce in evidence – Sharon fruit and local tobacco apart from the ubiquitous tea, for which every shop seems to have a low table with built-in hob and drain for the initial rinse.
Next day I ride again with Mr Lin and my now battered and dusty cabin bag to catch another bus to Gaobei, a cluster of three tulou, the centre one, Chengqilou truly vast and visibly patched up over the centuries.
By now I’m tulou’d out and ready for yet another bus ride, longer than expected, back to Xiamen and the relief of a 21st-century hotel room, air conditioning and unlimited pillows. And no wild beasts.
HOW TO GET THERE
From Macau you can fly direct to Xiamen with Air Macau or Xiamen Airlines.
They have recently been joined by China Southern Airlines.
You can also fly direct from Hong Kong (Xiamen Airlines and China Southern)
or from Shenzhen (Hainan Airlines).
From Xiamen, it’s overland to the tulou.
DON’T MISS
Tianluokeng
Yuchanglou
Gaobei village which has the colossal Chengqilou
Taxia village (where you can stay in a round tulou)
Hukeng Town (where you can stay in a square tulou in Hongkeng village).
You will receive a cordial welcome if you stay in a tulou – but don’t expect an en-suite bathroom.
