Longyan Tulou Information

"Fujian Earth Buildings" include Gaobei Earth Building Group, Hongkeng Earth Building Group, Chuxi Earth Building Group, Yanxiang Building and Zhenfu Building in Yongding County, Fujian Province, and Tianluokeng Earth Building Group and Henan Earth Building Group in Nanjing County. The Keng Tulou Group, Hegui Tower, Huaiyuan Tower, and the Dadi Tulou Group in Hua'an County are mainly distributed in the mountains in western and southern Fujian. They are famous for their unique architectural style and long history and culture. Not only are the most common round earth buildings, but they also include square earth buildings, chair-shaped earth buildings, etc., covering a complete architectural style of earth buildings.

Fujian Earth Buildings originated in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. After development in the early and middle Ming Dynasties, they gradually matured in the late Ming Dynasty, Qing Dynasty, and the Republic of China, and have continued to this day. Fujian earth buildings are unique large-scale rammed earth residential buildings in mountainous areas in the world, and are creative masterpieces of earth building art. Fujian earth buildings are located on the mountain, with a reasonable layout. They absorb the "Feng Shui" concept of traditional Chinese architectural planning (see Dong Bin's "Modern Feng Shui Essence"), adapt to the requirements of life and defense where tribes live together, and cleverly utilize the mountains. The narrow flat land and local raw soil, wood, cobblestone and other building materials are a self-contained system that is economical, sturdy, defensive, and highly aesthetic.

In the 1980s, the earth buildings in Nanjing County, Zhangzhou City, and Yongding County, Longyan City, Fujian Province were mistaken for mushroom-shaped nuclear weapons equipment by Americans. Little did they know that this unique structure had been produced since the Song and Yuan Dynasties. Large-scale rammed earth residential buildings have been standing on a land of more than 600 square kilometers in southwestern Fujian for centuries before the first atomic bomb exploded.

China's "Fujian Earth Buildings" were officially included in the "World Heritage List" at the 32nd World Heritage Conference held in Quebec City, Canada, on July 6, 2008.

The layout of the earth buildings

The Yongding Hakka earth buildings have a reasonable layout, which is very similar to the ancient residential buildings in the Yellow River Basin. From the perspective of the external environment, attention is paid to choosing places facing the sun, sheltered from wind, and close to water and short roads. The building address is convenient for life and production. Most building sites are facing south, with running water on the left, road on the right, pond in front, and hills behind; building sites should avoid going against the trend, facing south, facing north, high in front and low in back, and facing a pit (to avoid collision). If the mountain behind the building is higher, the building should be built higher or farther away from the mountain, which can not only avoid wind and moisture, but also make the layout of the building and the mountain harmonious. They not only select building sites based on the above three aspects, but also are good at using slopes, terraces and other special areas to build various forms of earth buildings, and even develop into a staggered, well-layered, spectacular earth building group with mountainous architectural characteristics, like the ancient bamboos of Yongding , Chuxi Tulou Group. These particularities are undoubtedly closely related to geology, geography, ecology, landscape, architecture, ethics, and aesthetics. In other words, they are closely related to the traditional culture of the Central Plains.

Judging from the earth building architecture itself, most of the layouts of Yongding Hakka earth buildings have the following three characteristics:

(1) Clear central axis, palace-style enclosed houses, and five-phoenix towers , mansion-style square buildings, square buildings, etc. are particularly prominent. The hall, main building, and gate are all built on the central axis, and the horizontal buildings and ancillary buildings are distributed on the left and right sides. The overall symmetry is extremely strict on both sides. The same is true for the round building, with the main entrance, central hall, and back hall all placed on the central axis.

(2) Taking the hall as the core. The building has a hall and a main hall. Organize courtyards with the hall as the center, and group groups with the courtyard as the center. Even in the round building, the main hall has a very prominent position.

(3) The corridor runs through the entire building, extending in all directions. However, there are very few earth buildings in Yongding and even in Hakka areas such as Jiqing Building, which are small units with each household being self-contained and not connected to each other.

If earth buildings are divided according to their shape, they can be roughly divided into round buildings. Square building, Wufeng building. There are also deformed concave fonts, semicircular fonts, and trigrams. Among them, round buildings and square buildings are the most common, and both shapes often coexist. The round and square buildings, which cover an area of ??several thousand square meters and are inhabited by families, are built with simple geometric shapes between mountains and narrow valleys. The man-made buildings form a strong contrast with the surrounding green natural landscape. After China's economic opening up in the 1980s, the earth building landscape in southern Fujian and Guangdong, dominated by round earth buildings and square earth buildings, attracted the attention of the tourism industry around the world.

Round House

Round House is a round earth building, also known as Yuanzhai Earth Building, Fujian Round House or Hakka Enclosed House. Its purpose is more important than defense, so the name is embedded in the name of "zhai". Although there are not the most earth buildings in this shape, they are usually the largest in area. The largest area can even reach more than 72 bays.

Usually the ground floor of a round building is the dining room and kitchen, the second floor is the warehouse, and the third floor and above are the bedrooms. Each small family or individual room is independent, and each room is connected by a circle of public corridors. These designs usually focus on defensive functions.

Square Building

Square building is the most popular earth building. The characteristic of this type of building is that a tall square or nearly square wall is first built, and then other buildings in the building are expanded along this wall. The standard specifications for expansion are usually an open patio and a corridor around the patio. These floors of the same construction style are stacked up to as high as six stories. Finally, wooden floors and wooden beams were used, and tile roofs were added, which became the most common square building among earth buildings.

Wufeng Tower

The "Fuyu Tower" in Hukeng Town is a typical Wufeng Tower. Wufeng Tower is also known as Da Fu Di, Mansion Style, Palace Style or Bijia Tower. Although their names are the same, there are some differences. This type of earth building is composed of two-sided rooms, a gate tower and other detailed structures. Its characteristic is that it usually has three concave and two protruding shapes from the outside, which looks like an ancient Chinese penholder. Wufeng Tower is mainly distributed in counties in western Fujian and Zhangzhou. Among them, the Zhangzhou Hakkas who immigrated to Taiwan also brought their Wufeng Tower architectural style to Taiwan.

Others

In addition to the round tower, square tower and Wufeng tower. Earth buildings classified by shape include concave-shaped, semicircular, and trigram-shaped earth buildings. Concave-shaped earth buildings are mainly distributed in Nanjing and Zhao'an in southern Fujian. Semicircular earth buildings are distributed in Pinghe and Yongding, while Bagua-shaped earth buildings are occasionally found in Yongding, Zhangpu, Hua'an, Zhao'an, Nanjing and eastern Guangdong, China. Among them, the largest Bagua Tulou in China is the Daoyun Tower

The biggest characteristic of the Tulou is its long construction period, which usually takes two to three years to complete, and even larger ones may take decades. , the hard work of generations of craftsmen. The wood used must be 300 to 500 cubic meters. Because the earth walls are thick at the bottom and narrow at the top, they are solid and strong. They have good "three defenses" (windproof, waterproof, and earthquake proof). Some are also fireproof (three-ring earth walls are three fire sealing walls), especially their extraordinary earthquake resistance. It is amazing to see that almost all earth buildings have been tested by earthquakes of varying degrees and have survived unharmed. For example, the "Huanji Tower" in Hukeng Town, Yongding, built in 1693 AD, has experienced several earthquakes in the past 300 years. The big earthquake on the sixth day of the fourth lunar month in 1918 only cracked between the 3rd and 4th floors on the upper right side of the main entrance. A 50-centimeter-wide crack is 1.2 meters thick at the bottom of the round building wall structure. When it extends upward, it is slightly inclined inward and has a trapezoidal shape with strong centripetal force. Over the past 70 years, it has miraculously healed naturally, leaving only a crack one to two centimeters wide. In recent years, in order to avoid the inconvenience of people entering and exiting through one door, people have opened another small door in the "Fuxin Building" with the most "experience" in Yongding. They invited stonemasons to spend a lot of effort to dig with steel chisels for several days. Opened, the toughness of this triple earth wall can be seen.

Another feature of Tulou architecture is that the structure is extremely standardized and the rooms are of the same size. Most earth buildings have only one door for entry and exit, and there is a patio inside the building, which can store food for more than half a year. It is like a strong castle and is easy to prevent theft and banditry (in the old days, the Hakka people often suffered from bandits, so they built tall earth walls to prevent accidents. ). Because the walls are taller and thicker, they can not only prevent moisture and keep warm, but also insulate and cool down, which has many advantages. When the Hakka people built earthen buildings, they built the chimneys into the earthen walls to protect the kitchen from black smoke pollution and make it very clean. The construction of earth buildings is also a manifestation of the old Hakka people's belief in Feng Shui. According to superstition, there is a "road evil" on the road, a "stream evil" on the stream, and a "concave evil" at the exit. When building a square building, they thought that one corner would encounter "evil spirits", so they carved the words "Taishan Shigandang" on the corner stone to ward off evil spirits, or nailed wooden boards with gossip and characters on the corner of the building. , used to "control evil spirits". Round buildings have no corners, and it is said that "evil spirits" can slip away. Therefore, in order to avoid "evil spirits", most earth buildings after the Qing Dynasty were round. Generally speaking, it is obvious that the construction of earth buildings should be practical.

Earth buildings are not only distinctive in architectural style, but the names of most earth buildings also have meaningful meanings. Yongding earth buildings may be named after their orientation, such as "Dongsheng Building" which faces east and west, which means the sun rises from the east; or they may be named after their owners, such as "Zhenfu Building", which was built solely by Su Zhenfu; or they may be named in memory of their ancestors. For example, the "Qingfu Tower", "Fuyu Tower", "Zhencheng Tower" and "Qingcheng Tower" built by the descendants of Lin Fucheng in Yongding are always inseparable from the words "Fu" and "Cheng"; or they are named after the natural environment.

For example, "Wangfeng Tower" is named because it faces the Bijia Mountain Peak, and "Huanxing Tower" is named because it is surrounded by water on three sides and is shaped like a circular building; or it is named for blessings, such as "Songzhu Tower" and "Fifty Building" respectively take the meanings of "green bamboos and luxuriant pines" and "five winds and ten rains are auspicious"; or named to encourage future generations, such as "Jingxun Building" and "Chengqi Building"; or to start a business. For example, "Fuqiao Building" was built by Jiang's overseas Chinese, which means the lucky house of overseas Chinese; "Qunxing Building" was built because everyone raised funds, and it means that the group lives in prosperity; or it is named with a pun of praise or derogation, "Ru Sheng" "Lou", sitting east facing west, is likened to the rising sun. Later generations also joked that it was as small as a meter rising.

As an architectural form that Fujian Hakka people are proud of, earth buildings are a treasure among Fujian folk houses. At the same time, it also incorporates humanistic factors, which can be called the epitome of the tripartite combination of "heaven, earth, and man". Dozens of households and hundreds of people go to the first floor together, reflecting the Hakka family tradition of living together and living in harmony. Therefore, a history of earth buildings is a history of rural families. The descendants of Tulou can often tell the story of their family's origins without the need for a genealogy. In addition, local materials and the most common earth materials were used to build tall castles, turning the ordinary into magic and reflecting the Hakkas' ingenious creation in the process of conquering nature.

After the 1960s, the construction of traditional earth buildings has basically stopped. Today, there are tens of thousands of earth buildings of various shapes preserved in western and southern Fujian. Among them, Yongding County and Nanjing County have the largest number. There are more than 23,000 earth buildings (square and garden) in Yongding. The earth buildings are concentrated in Hukeng, Gaotou, Xiayang, Guzhu and other towns. Most of the earth buildings are well preserved and still inhabited. Mixed with ordinary residential buildings, the huge earth buildings stand out from the crowd and are particularly eye-catching. The "Chengqi Building" in Gaobei Village, Gaotou Township, Yongding County has frequently appeared in movies and TV shows. It has also been included in the "Dictionary of Chinese Places of Interest" and has become one of China's "Residences" stamps. With its unique round building specimen, it has made the reputation of "Yongding Earth Building" spread like wildfire and has become synonymous with Fujian Hakka Earth Building.