Hongkeng Folk Village

Hongkeng Folk Village in Yongding County is the primary destination for tulou visitors, and with good reason: the village packs more than a dozen tulou of different sizes and periods into a compact valley, connected by paths through paddy fields and bamboo groves. The most famous individual building is Zhencheng Lou, a large round tulou from 1912 whose inner ring follows an eight-trigram layout. The adjacent Rusheng Lou, at just 17 metres diameter, is one of the smallest tulou in existence and sits incongruously next to its enormous neighbour.

The village operates as a living community alongside the tourist infrastructure — families continue to live in their ancestral rooms, children play in the central courtyards, and the guesthouses operating in several of the tulou are genuine family businesses. Arriving in the late afternoon and staying overnight is by far the best approach: the day-trippers leave, the village quiets down, and the morning light on the earthen walls before the next wave arrives is the experience most worth having. Arrive with cash; card payment is unreliable. Hongkeng is about 80 kilometres south of Longyan city.

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A story
The most famous tulou in Hongkeng is Zhencheng Lou, built in 1912 by a wealthy tobacco merchant who had the rings of the outer and inner buildings arranged on the pattern of the eight trigrams of the I Ching. The design is not just decorative: the eight sections of the inner ring correspond to the eight directions and their associated philosophical meanings, and the rooms were allocated to family branches according to this scheme. The octagonal layout made the building unusual even among tulou, and when outsiders first saw aerial photographs of it in the 1980s, the CIA reportedly spent several months trying to determine whether it was a missile installation.

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