Of Cloaks and Daggers, and Whether Pigs can Fly: Visit to the Hakka Homeland

On Day Two of his visit to Xiamen, Jeremiah visited the Hakka heartland of Yongding Township, best known for its tulou (土楼) or earthen buildings. It was a trip that Jeremiah had been looking forward to since his childhood, ever since his late grandfather gave him a PRC stamp in the late 1980s commemorating the tulou.

The journey by bus from Xiamen to Yongding took 3 hours (one way), but the long ride was definitely it. Fruit and tea plantations as well as mountain monasteries lining the highway make the journey a visual feast. Imagine a banana plantation that goes on and on for miles.

Tulou generally come in two forms - circular and squarish. Both function as clan residential buildings - it is not uncommon for up to four generations of 2000 Hakkas to live in one tuluo. Built with dried mud and supported by wooden beams and columns inside, tulou look deceptively simple but surprisingly can take up to 80 years to build. Usually consisting of four storeys, the first storey is used as a kitchen, the second as stores while the third and fourth are the sleeping quarters. The shape of the tulou supposedly facilitate its defence - the Hakkas were migrants to the Min region and were not on the best relations with the natives. Unfortunately, nowadays, tulou seem to be fighting a losing battle against modernity, with most young Hakka families eschewing the tulou for modern city life. One tulou that Jeremiah visited had a capacity of 200 families but only housed 4.