Yongding Earth Building —— A Residential Building with a Long History

Yongding Tulou is located in Yongding County, Longyan City, Fujian Province on the southeast coast of China. Yongding, a pure Hakka county, has the largest number of earth buildings in Fujian, with more than 23,000. It is a unique and magical mountain residential building in the world, and a wonderful work of ancient architecture in China. In July 2008, it was successfully listed in the World Heritage List. It has a long history, unique style, grand scale and exquisite structure.

Earth buildings are divided into square, round, pentagonal, octagonal, sawtooth, sawtooth, diaojiao building and other internal types. Yongding County has 360 famous circular buildings and more than 65,438 square buildings. Among them, the most famous tulou are-Fujian Tulou King-Chengqi Building, Tulou Prince-Sincere Building, Tulou Princess-Zhen Fu Building. Among them, Chengqi Building is the largest building in Fujian, which entered the Guinness World Record for the largest earth building on 20 10.

In Hongkeng Village, Hukeng Town, Yongding County, a national key cultural relics protection unit, there are more than 40 magnificent "round buildings"-Sincere Building, Fuyu Building, a classic mansion-style earth building, Kuiju Building, a palace-style building like Potala Palace, and a pocket-sized round building-Rusheng Building. They flow downstream, magnificent and patchwork, and complement each other with green mountains, green waters, bamboo, arch bridges, waterwheels and farmland, forming a colorful picture.

The miracle of tulou group fully embodies the collective strength and superb wisdom of Hakkas, and also shines with the brilliance of Chinese excellent culture. Hakkas, originally Han Chinese in the Central Plains, were forced to move south due to war, famine and other reasons. By the Southern Song Dynasty, they had traveled to Wan Li for nearly a thousand years and formed a Hakka clan in the border area of Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi. In the process of being forced to leave their homes and migrate, they have experienced many hardships and many difficulties have to rely on themselves. Their surnames always live together.

Because most Hakkas live in remote mountainous areas or deep forests, Hakkas have created a "defensive" castle-style building house-Tulou. Tulou was originally square, with palace-style and mansion-style, with different postures and firmness. Because the square earth building is directional, the corner is dark, and the ventilation and lighting are different, Hakka people have designed a round earth building with good ventilation and lighting, which has no beginning and no end. In ancient times, even before the founding of the People's Republic of China, Tulou has always been a strong fortress for Hakkas to resist foreign enemies.

The doors of tulou are all made of miscellaneous wood with a thickness of 20 to 30 cm, with iron plates nailed on the outside, and some doors are equipped with fire-proof sinks. There are no windows on the first and second floors of the circular earth building, and there are watchtowers on the front and left and right sides of the highest part of the building. You can see the enemy outside the building at a glance. Yongding earth building not only has the unique function of defending the enemy, but also has the characteristics of earthquake prevention, fire prevention and animal prevention.

In order to prevent fire, many circular buildings are divided into one sixth, one eighth or one tenth, and a firewall is built in the middle to prevent the fire from spreading and burning down the whole building. Since the reform and opening up, Yongding tulou has attracted more and more attention from the world.