Category Archives: Architecture

The Great Firewall

Tuohe


Heated wall.
The homestay may have had an unpredictable electricity supply, but the house’s central heating definately worked. Fires inside double layered separation walls turn them into giant radiators that not only kept the rooms warm, but dried the washing!

Boring Bricks?

Yongding County – Gulang Yu


Locally made custom branded Bricks in Zhencheng Tulou (振成楼).
三  is the character for “three” in Chinese, representing the 3 brothers in the family. 山 is the character for “mountain”, and is their generation name.


Ancient brickwork in direlict Shunyuan Tulou (顺源楼).
Suggestions to what the chalk graffiti says are welcome…


Leopard-print brickwork in Gulang Yu (鼓浪屿).
Colonial villas on this island off Xiamen city are influenced by European occupiers.

Kindness from the Heart

Fujian Classic Tulou
16  September

I expected Yongding County to be a typical tourist stop, I expected to be harassed by the locals to buy and see things, I expected my first photo post in the land of mudhouses to be of a building.”

I was wrong.

Instead, I would like to introduce you to 3 people:


90 year old granny.
As we peered in nosily at her cooking and pottering around in the kitchen, she came out to chat to us. “We made these walls by pounding down the earth. These walls will stand for thousands and thousands of years, not hundreds like new buildings.”


76 year old grandpa.
As we examined a stone stand outside his room, he came out to invite us for tea.  “I didn’t grow up in Fuzhan, I was born in Burma. I returned after the Japanese invasion and my father was killed.” He also scolded me, rightly so, “You are Chinese and you cannot speak Mandarin!”


Entrepenuer, Tulou owner and hostel manager.
(age unknown, however the grannies said he was too old not be married yet!)
Driving us around, telling us about his family and his ambitions to buy and convert this crumbling direlict Tulou into a hostel, he reflects “the people still living in these undeveloped Tulou, their kindness is from the heart”

The Tulou are amazing feats of architecture, each ingenious and unique in their own way. However, the greatest impression they left on me are how they have instilled such a sense of pride in family and community. This warmth extends even to strangers who wander without permission through their homes.  Tourism may have changed the working functions of the Tulou,  but the migrators of the past have passed down within the mudhouse walls their community spirit.