by Tom Carter

Created on: July 17, 2010

Tulou Earth Villages of the Fujian Hakka

In 1986, at the height of nuclear tensions between Cold War superpowers, American space satellites mandated by President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative stealthily drifted above southeast China.  The resulting imagery shockingly revealed what appeared to be hundreds of missile silos scattered throughout the mountain ranges of Fujian province.

Fearing an impending nuclear attack at the hands of Red China, the U.S. Secretary of Defense immediately deployed a crack unit of C.I.A. spies into the P.R.C. to investigate, whom returned to the Pentagon in hysterics: “Those aren’t missiles, dumbass, those are mud!

The above is a true story.  Constructed primarily out of cylinderic rammed earth with cantilevered slate rooftops, and ranging in size from 7,000 to a whopping 40,000 square meters, the spherical tulou villages of Fujian do uncannily resemble missile silos (they also look like UFOs, magic mushrooms, etc.).  And while they are arguably the most unique structures in all of China, the story behind the tulou origins is equally as intriguing.

Fleeing Manchu-dominated north China during the Qing dynasty, waves of Han refugees migrated to the south and settled in coastal Fujian.  Hostile Cantonese locals, righteously referring to themselves as “original land” or Punti, however, did not take kindly to the new wave of outlanders and instead took up arms.

Eventually spawning the bloody, 17th century Punti-Hakka Clan wars all along the provincial south, the territorial Cantonese drove the Hakka - a derisive name meaning “guest family” - far away from the fertile shores of the China Sea into the inland mountain ranges.  With little else to protect themselves from the natives, the resourceful Hakka constructed fortress-like structures directly from the natural elements, which proved both self-sustaining and impervious to invasion.

Hundreds of years later, the Hakka’s insular way of life has resulted in a distinct Han subculture – including their own customs and language which some mistakenly confuse as an ethnic minority – derived entirely from their tulou dwellings.

Not unlike a village, tulou are a microcosm of communal living that puts to shame any urban Chinese apartment complex.  The clay compound’s periphery orbits an open-air cobblestone courtyard that echoes with the enclosed sounds of up to a hundred families cohabitating

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