Jens Aaberg-Jørgensen

Rushenglou, Hongkeng village

Originally published in Danish in ARKITEKTEN  no. 28, November 2000, pp. 2–9. 
Text and illustrations have been updated for the web edition.
(Copyright © 2004-2006 JAA-J).

The Wuyi mountains of Fujian

We are in the impassable Wuyi mountains of the province of Fujian in South Eastern China, 7 or 8 hours' drive from the city of Xiamen. which lies on Taiwan strait. On the coast the land is flat and arid while further inland the landscape becomes more hilly and fertile, with banana plantations appearing. The hills become mountains, and here, nested in the mountain valleys we find these extraordinary clan homes, the Tulou. 

Map

(Discussion of the terms tu and tulou::
In this article the use of the word tulou is restricted to the description of these unique three or four storied clan homes. The word tulou is normally used to describe any earth walled building over one storey, (tu=earth, lou=building). Such buildings are to be found in many places, throughout China and elsewhere.
Wagner adds that the word tu also is a prefix meaning ‘native’ and often follows a place name or the name of an etnic group, e.g. is Fujian tulou means the traditional living house in Fujian. Later the meaning changed to Fujian tulou or Kejia tulou (Kejia is the mandarin pronounciation of Hakka, which is Cantonese meaning guest or foreigner, se also note 6). Today many Chinese think of tulou as a multistory living house made of clay). Donald B. Wagner, 2002.
According to Ronald G. Knapp: "China's Old Dwelling", Honolulu 2000, p. 260 and 266, the use of the term 'earthen dwellings" og "tulou" is a misnomer. Some tulou were actually constructed completely of cut granite or had substantial walls of fired brick. Most large-scale tulou seen today were built of a composite material known as sanhetu (a composite mixture af earth sand and lime) rather than just earth. In calling these structures "tulou", however, one must be careful to qualify the term as a broadly descriptive label for a building type rather than as a narrow term defining a specific building material).

The tulous are found in the southern and western part of the Fujian Province as well as in the neighboring province of Guangdong. 
They vary in size, and can be circular or rectangular.

The round form is exceeded by the squared in numbers but seems to be the most recent form having diameters ranging from 17 to 91 metres. 

The exact period in which they first appeared is not known, but it is believed that they originate from the 13th or 14th century or even earlier. Some were built as late as the late 1900's.
There are a few thousand tulou in existence today, with as many as 5-600 inhabitants spanning three or four generations. Of these perhaps a thousand are round, yuanlou (round building). 

The round tulou, yuanlou, range widely in size. Five standing yuanlou exceed 70 meters in diameter and there are several less than 20 meters in diameter.  Perhaps the largest is Zaitianlou in Zhaoan with 2,4 m thick walls and a diameter of 91 meters. Among the smallest yuanlou is Rushenglou in Hongkeng village with a diameter of 17 meter's (Knapp, 2000, p. 264).

The tulou

The thick outer wall of a tulou separates two distinct worlds:

On the outside, the village's relatively bare pathways and buildings are of the same material, clay, giving the village and its surroundings a very homogeneous appearance. One meets very few people and the tulou with their forbidding appearance show little interest in the world outside.

Behind the main gate there is normally only a single portal. The tulou is dense and compact, with up to 250 small uniform rooms, constructed in two- or three-story wooden structures. These are placed around the buildings periphery and ordered symmetrically around the tulou's central axis. Through identical galleries all of the rooms look out onto the open courtyard, as is normally the case in most Chinese homes. 

Ancestral altars

A rectangular tulou has the ancestral altar set into the building's peripheral range of rooms facing the courtyard while in the case of the circular tulou it is a detached one-story building in the courtyard.
The ancestral altar is where the founding members of the clan are honoured and guests are received. On the wall hangs a picture of the founding father of the clan - perhaps next to it a crane symbolising a desire for long life. By the wall is a long narrow table on which is placed an incense burner or a vase with flowers. It is in this chamber that the boys of the clan were taught reading and writing etc. On less formal occasions the old men sit here and smoke or the old women gossip while they watch over the youngest children and grandchildren.
In South China success in life is guided by supernatural forces, and this has consequences for the building's orientation. Like water from the mountain, the supernatural forces are to be channeled into the the ancestral altar, which therefore lies on the central axis opposite the entrance (J. M. Potter, quoted in the Amos Rapport: "House Form and Culture", Prentice-Hall, 1969, page 51).

Bray writes about the altar: "Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western observers remarked that every Chinese house, whether of peasent or gentleman, was first and foremost an ancestral temple: the entire structure was centered on the shrine, and when a household divided, each brother set up an altar of his own in his new dwelling. Though it seemed that such customs were immemorial, peasants - and even scholars - had not always been entitled to their own ancestral altar. The domestic shrine was originally a privilege strictly confined to the aristocracy. But during the Song a new elite, the educated gentry, established dominance over government and local society. To underline their elite status they formed their own patrilineal descent groups and set up ancestral shrines within their homes" (Francesca Bray: "Technology and Society in Ming China (1368-1644)", p. 56, American Historical Association, 2000).

Ancestral altars

The living quarters

In China, as elsewhere, a family home is divided into zones, from the open and accessible entrance and courtyard to the total privacy of the bedroom.
In the tulou guests have access to the ancestral altar and the family’s living quarters, while access to the rooms along the gallery is restricted to the inhabitants.

The tulou as a fortification

In past there has been a tradition for the extended families of South East China to live together and there are good grounds for this tradition. Clan cohesion was a important factor in the controlling of all activities - political, religious and economical. This cohesion meant greater stability for the clan and the individual  
(Fei Xiaotong: "Xiangtu Zhongguo - From the Soil", California, 1947/94, page 83).

The Hakka are a ethnic group from the North belonging to the Han Chinese. They are today spread over the whole of Southern China, concentrated mostly in the mountainous regions and have migrated further into many other countries.
During the last two thousand years mass migration has been evident in China, as the Han Chinese influence spread towards the South, especially towards the then thinly populated and "wild" South / Southwest China.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth century there were many migrants from north China, including many Hakka. As relatively late arrivals they were forced to inhabit mountainous and less fertile land such as the Wuyi mountains.
 

The Circular tulou

The circular tulou are something of a riddle, for apart from a few temples there are no other examples of circular buildings to be found in China. Some maintain that the shape was known in Fujian in watch towers and fortified villages, and that these have simply developed into residences. Others suggest that, they were the last stage of a long development, starting with more complex forms and consolidating into the simpler rectangle and finally evolving into the circular form.
(Huang Hanmin, Echo No. 22, Taipei 1989, pages 25 and 32 (The article was kindly translated by Laila Liu and Peter Lauridsen.))

The circular form has several advantages:

1. Technically a circular form is easier to build because of the identical cross-section throughout and without the need for complex roof and wall corner construction. See also the section "Construction"

2. The circular form allows more economic use of material. Wood is more expensive to obtain, transport and work than clay. For each jian (building module) the outer rim of clay is longer than that of wood, which faces the courtyard. 
Further, a given amount of material gives a 41 % larger courtyard and approximately a 13 % larger building area in the circular than in the rectangular tulou. 

3. A circular building has greater static stability. Analysis of the outer wall alone indicates that a cylindrical shell is more stable (ring and restraining moments).The cylindrical shell is further strengthened considerably by the rigid, horizontal and circular decks of each floor (membrane forces). If additional vertical elements are built, such as fire walls (as illustrated in the case of the Zhenchenglou) the rigidity and strength is further improved, as the cylinder surfaces are fixed in all four directions. 
(Ole Vanggaard, engineer and lecturer at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, in Copenhagen, kindly analysed the tulou's static stability for this article).

4.The circular tulou has a more uniform room division - As the main source of light is from the courtyard, a corner room would be poorly lit and without adequate ventilation.

5. Local superstition holds that evil spirits are everywhere, especially along roads and in brooks, streams and mountain passes. Every corner in a rectangular building is an opportunity for evil spirits to enter the building as the circular tulou have no corners, spirits are more likely to pass by (Huang Hanmin in Echo (ref: note 12)).

No contemporary sources explain why circular tulou were built. Most counties in China have ‘local gazetteers’ spanning hundreds of years but very few contain information regarding local building costums.

The local history for this part of the country does not contain any interesting information regarding the locality’s architecture and house form (Poul Andersen).

The change in clan structure 
and the dereliction of the tulou.

The tulou represent an epoch in China’s history which is now closed, both technologically and socially. It took up to six or seven years to build the larger tulou, and today there are cheaper and faster methods of home construction.

The tulou were built in response to a specific historical situation, with a cohesive clan structure and a weak state that could not manifest its power at the periphery. The reduced importance of the clan today is a logical result of changed social structure. Since the 1980's there has been a resurgence of clan influence in local politics, but many of its functions have been taken over by the individual on the one hand and the state on the other. Rural economies are disintegrating as people move to the city.

In some Fujian villages, during the last 15 years, up to 25% of the population have found employment in the nearest towns working as drivers or in restaurants, brick and fertiliser factories, coal mines and trade etc.
(Olivier Laude, Unique Habitats, p. 163-173 in ‘Village Landscapes’, ed. by Ronald Knapp, Hawaii, 1992).

The stronger State has made fortified architecture unnecessary as well as illegal. The result is a splitting up of the Clan structure into individual families, who build separate family homes, often adjoining the tulou, which gradually become uninhabited and derelict. There is neither money or incentive to maintain them. Since 1985 many single family houses have been built in the villages. I have seen several examples of the traditional tulou room functions and disposition being applied in the newly built concrete and brick houses (although poorer people still build in stamped clay), which lack any form of elegance or proportional sense after many years of disregard for traditional aesthetic values and craftsmanship.

In the early or mid 1990's plaques were placed on the facades of a few tulou, telling briefly of their size and special characteristics. This was in conjunction with a major international conference on the Hakka people, The First International Conference of Hakkaology, held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1992.

The plaques drew attention to the buildings but did not automatically lead to funding from the State, even for their minimal upkeep.

China is not and should not be an open-air museum. Understandably, the country’s development proceeds without much regard for the conservation of archaic social structures and the corresponding architecture. The tulou are no longer built, and in a few generations they will have disappeared entirely, only to be found in literature.