Hakka houses.

Ok, we're going to go back a little way and tell a quick weekend story that we missed due to just a whole world of busy going on, way back in the middle of May we joined up with our friends Ed and Christine for a tour of the Fujian Tulou, a short three hours away from Xiamen. We basically forgot to tell you all about this amazing trip because the very next day my brother, Matt, came in for a visit and commandeered the blog....

So, a brief lesson here, Xiamen is located on the coast in the Fujian province here in China, and these Hakka houses are nearer to the border with the Guangdong province, located in a beautiful hilly countryside.

The houses were built, some as long as 700 years ago, when northern Chinese moved south and had to build structures that were easy for them to defend. Their solution was to build round structures with only one entrance, some of which could house up to eighty families. Amazing places, and all of them are still inhabited with locals...

Looking down on Tian Luo Keng Village

Ed, Christine, Mark, Tina - above Tian Luo Keng Village

The entrance to one of the Tulou houses.

Inside view of the Tulou

These complexes are set up with a temple in the middle, as shown in the above photo, and then 4-5 stories of housing. The first floor is the kitchen and the second was food storage, with the upper floors reserved for living in.

It was truly amazing to see these places, and to see the locals that were still living there. Tomorrow we will share some more photos that we took....