tulous - hakka's earth buildings

my friend victor samuel and his wife helen, both retired, went with their church friend jason, who retired when he was in his forties, to yongding county in southern china. they made the trip together with 16 members of the s'pore adventurers' club.

they flew tiger airways to quangzhou. from there, they took the night train to yongding. helen complained that she could not sleep a wink during the ride.

i was at victor's place for dinner on friday. after dinner, he showed me all the 600 pictures that he had taken with his digital camera.

a lot of the pictures showed the tulous which the americans had mistakenly thought were missile launching silos.

each tulou will usually house around 20 families with about 100 people in total. the houses are built around a main courtyard to allow in light and air, and to house livestock. they have wells and complex drainage systems so they can be completely self-sufficient for long periods of time.

the walls are about a metre thick and the doors are bolted. the ground floor has slits for rifles, the second floor is for storing grains or rice, and the third and fourth floors are inhabited. they are effectively fortified villages.

from his pictures, i could see that every tulou has a stream or river flowing in front of it. it seems that the hakka people believe water will bring luck to them, especially if the water is flowing in front of the house.not all tulous are round.

in fact, there are more square tulous than round ones in china. most young people have moved out of their traditional homes. those who still occupy the tulous are the elderly people and young children