Nanjing Tulou

The Nanjing Tulou are a cluster of Fujian's famous rammed-earth communal buildings in Nanjing County, about 80 kilometres northwest of Zhangzhou city. Less visited than the Yongding Tulou further northwest but inscribed under the same UNESCO World Heritage designation, they are architecturally comparable and considerably less crowded. The Tianluokeng cluster — five Tulou arranged on a hillside in a formation that became the image used for the UNESCO inscription — is the most photographed, but the individual buildings in Shuyang and Shufeng are more atmospheric for exploring.

The Tulou were built by the Hakka and Minnan peoples as self-sufficient clan communities, each circular or square building housing an entire extended family of 50 to 200 people. The rammed-earth walls are up to a metre thick and several storeys tall; the interior courtyards hold wells, kitchens, and ancestral halls. Some are still inhabited, which makes a slow walk through them — stopping for tea with residents, examining the communal cooking areas, reading the clan histories on the walls — one of the more genuine cultural encounters available in Fujian.

things to do sight
A story
The Tulou's circular layout is not random: the thick outer wall houses the communal living quarters (sometimes four storeys high), while the courtyard inside holds an ancestral hall facing the main gate — so that every family's front door looks toward the altar of their shared ancestors. The ground floor rooms were traditionally used for storage and livestock, not sleeping, because the outer walls had no windows on the ground level — a defensive design feature that made the buildings essentially self-sufficient fortresses.