Fujian Tulou sites
— — a village folded into one round wall.
Not only on a wall.
“Earthen towers, three to five storeys high, ringed around an open courtyard with a single gate. Hakka families built them along the streams of southwestern Fujian beginning in the twelfth century — defence against bandits, warmth in winter, one extended clan under one roof. The largest, Chengqi Lou, has 400 rooms across four concentric rings. From the ridge above Tianluokeng the cluster reads like five stones set in a hand. — from the studio
Fujian Tulou sites, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Fujian Tulou are rammed-earth communal dwellings built by Hakka and Minnan families across the mountainous interior of southwestern Fujian Province, mostly in Yongding, Nanjing, and Hua'an counties. UNESCO inscribed 46 of the buildings in 2008 across ten distinct property clusters, including Chuxi, Tianluokeng, Hekeng, Gaobei, and Hongkeng. The earliest surviving examples date to the twelfth century; most standing tulou were built between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries. Several thousand survive across the region, ranging from small square forms to the great circular fortresses up to five storeys high.
The walls are built of compacted earth mixed with sticky rice, brown sugar, lime, and bamboo strips, raised on a granite plinth and finished with a clay-tiled timber roof. The base of a large tulou wall can be more than 1.8 metres thick. Chengqi Lou in Gaobei, called the King of Tulou, is 62 metres in diameter, holds four concentric rings and roughly 400 rooms, and has housed up to 800 people. The single ground-floor gate is the only opening; the inner courtyard holds the ancestral hall and the well.
Most visitors enter through Yongding or Nanjing county, both reachable by road from Xiamen in two to three hours; high-speed rail runs to Longyan and Nanjing stations. The Tianluokeng cluster of five tulou seen from the upper viewpoint is the most photographed angle in the region. Entry tickets cover access to specific clusters rather than the whole site, and prices range from roughly 50 to 100 yuan. Many tulou are still inhabited; guesthouses inside a working tulou offer a quieter overnight than the day-trip crowds.