Hakka Houses

Well, we did this last year, but thought it was worth going back to, and since Barb and Nancy had the time, we added this to our agenda. This time, however we saw more villages, and a couple of different houses than last time. All in all a good day, and both Barb and Nancy were able to see some of China's great countryside.



Barb and Nancy were able to experience the contrasting scenery that China offers, from the big cities, to the older canal towns, to the countryside, and the charm of our little home. We hope they enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed sharing a small portion of this country with them.

Nancy and Barb's big adventure - the continuation

After our night of heavy drinking on Tuesday (what were we thinking) we left on a "3 hour tour", drive that is. We drove to the country and saw the Hakka houses or round houses as they are known to many tourists. Imagine a house that is so big it can hold upto a 1000 family members! Imagine no running water! Imagine no indoor toilets! They are quite something to see, let us tell you, but we could not imagine how they did it. Today many of the young people are leaving and going to school and they are not coming back to the Hakka's and many a falling apart. However, there are 20,000 in this province and we won't see the end of them for a very long time. We also walked through a picturesque village that sat on a beautiful river. It was a great day. At the end we got into our van and headed back to Xiamen for another 3 hour drive. Needless to say we all 3 passed out for a while.
Then Mark and Tina took us to "Chili's", not the real name but everything is made with chili's...you can just imagine...oy vay.

Today we went to the "Sisters" for lunch and then to the tailors to pick up all the items we had made...he did a great job. Then we went for a hair wash...a very civilized way to have your hair done...you lie down and they massage your head and then your arms and then your back and then they blow dry, took about an hour. We want this service in Toronto and all for only $5.00 CAD. We love this country. We then had our mani/pedi ($10.00) and now Tina, Mark and their friend
Yih are taking us out for a surprise night, we are afraid, very afraid. We will let you know all about tonight in our next installment.

Talk soon

Barb and Nancy

More on the Fujian Tulou

As promised - more photos of the Fujian Hakka houses, I'm hoping that you all took time to read up on their history, for as much as we try - we are not a good source for any factual information. I think proof of that would be that we mostly link to Wikipedia as a source.

Ok, the above is one of the later ones that we visited, where the inner temple was also part of a two story ring of housing. So, a ring within a ring, the inner being two stories and the outer four stories of families all living in, what we would like to believe, perfect harmony....

Another interesting tidbit about these houses is that they are on a tentative list to be a UNESCO World Heritage site, and as shown in the below photo the UNESCO Afficials noted the specialized tea that was produced in their region.

This was the man who lived in there, he was exceptionally proud to show off and serve their tea. The tea was excellent and we ended up buying a kilo, it is the tea that we are drinking now, pretty much every day.
This is the driver and our guide enjoying tea with us, in the background you can see Christine getting close up photos of either a local, the architecture, or maybe just a chicken.

The four of us in front of our last stop, Chengqilou - the King of Tulou

The Chengilou Tulou is absolutely amazing, it is actually four separate rings. The outer is four stories with 72 rooms on each level, the second ring is two stories with 40 rooms per floor, the third ring is 32 rooms, and the final center is a community center and temple.

Between the rings at Chengqilou

It is really hard to show the grandeur of this place, these last two photos are from the top floor. It is a lot of work trying to capture all the rings along with the outside scenery. All that and it was built in 1709...


While there we also had an incredible meal of some local dishes and managed to see a wedding party where the woman was being carried along in a palanquin. Just an absolutely great way to spend a Saturday...

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....