Kuiju Building – The Palace-Style Tulou
Built to conform to the natural mountain terrain, Kuiju Building features staggered layered architecture with exquisitely carved beams and eaves, resembling the Potala Palace in Xizang. This grand square palace-style tulou embodies the unique craftsmanship and wisdom of the Hakka people.
Its charm lies not only in architecture and culture but also in exquisite artistry. Intricate carvings, colored sculptures and paintings of flowers, birds, landscapes, pavilions and narrative figures throughout the building are vivid and lifelike, saturated with profound Hakka historical ambiance and rustic charm.
A horizontal plaque inscribed "Scholar Official Mansion" hangs inside, testifying to the building’s strong literary heritage. Records show that over more than a century, the owners of Kuiju Building valued education highly, nurturing a stream of talents: four residents attained jinshi rank or official positions above the seventh grade, more than 20 became university graduates, and over 40 emigrated overseas as overseas Chinese. The complex suffered damage during the Cultural Revolution.
Fuyu Building – The Classic Mansion-Style (Wufeng) Tulou
Fuyu Building is hailed as the quintessential mansion-style Wufeng tulou.
Side chambers flank the entrance hall. Behind the main hall stands a tall double-folding three-panel partition screen reaching the height of the first floor, serving both as a middle gateway and a spirit screen. The upper half of the six movable screen panels is hollowed and carved with gilded patterns. Behind the partition lies a rectangular courtyard paved with rammed tri-earth. Small side gates on either side of the partition connect to covered corridors flanking the courtyard in front of the ancestral hall. Wider than ordinary corridors, these spaces host banquets, with tiny side gates leading to horizontal wing buildings at the front edge of each expanded section.
Climbing two steps at the rear of the corridor brings visitors to the central hall veranda, with doorways on both sides opening into the horizontal wings. The central hall, housing the ancestral shrine, is a spacious timber-and-brick structure open to the front courtyard, over one meter higher than other rooms in the complex, adorned with richly carved beams and decorative paintings.
Recessed chambers extend backward on both sides of the main hall, with separate front and side doorways leading to the rear halls: hollow carved wooden screen doors face forward, and brick arched doorways to the sides, with another courtyard behind the screens. Two-story three-bay side chambers line both sides of the inner courtyard, accessible via small gates beside the brick arches. Corridors to the rear side chambers stretch back from both sides of the main hall. A staircase to the second floor is built against the rear wall of the main hall, linking to the rear chamber corridors on both sides.
The central hall on the second floor of the middle wing serves as the Guanyin Hall, with flooring higher than the connecting corridors of the rear side chambers. Short staircases at the front of each side corridor lead through arched doorways into the central Guanyin Hall.
Spacious and lofty, the Guanyin Hall enshrines a statue of Guanyin, flanked by hollow carved wooden partition screens beside the shrine cabinet. The roof beams and purlins are painted crimson, with a large colorful Bagua mural decorating the center of the ceiling. A 1.2-meter-high, 1-meter-wide stone platform stands at the hall entrance, edged with glazed lattice railings. Glazed lattice screens rise to the roof beams along the inner edge of the platform, both sides of the hall entrance, and between the columns supporting the ground-floor ancestral hall.
Fuxin Building – The Oldest Surviving Tulou
Facing west with its back to the east, Fuxin Building features a suspended gable roof covered with tiles, covering 1,275.76 square meters across three stories. The front wing (western section) has collapsed, leaving broken walls less than two stories high; part of the northern side has also crumbled. Weathered remnant walls gaze silently toward the setting sun, while tenacious wild grass growing along the foundations silently recounts the building’s long history to visitors.
The building spans six bays horizontally, totaling 34 meters in length, and six bays in depth (including stairwells), measuring 31.5 meters. The eaves extend 1.5 meters wide around the perimeter. It has only one grand gate, 3.5 meters high and 2.5 meters wide. No windows open onto the ground floor; windows on the second and third floors are just 0.8 meters tall and 0.15 meters wide on the exterior, expanding to 0.4 meters wide inward.
Five stairwells are distributed throughout the complex: one against the rear wall of the back hall, and four symmetrically placed at the four corners of the main building, each occupying roughly half the width of a standard bay. The surrounding second and third-floor corridors were constructed separately by different clan branches and remain disconnected from one another.
Two unique characteristics distinguish Fuxin Building:
- Walls rammed from raw earth mixed with lime and brown sugar are tougher than modern concrete. Several years ago, residents on the eastern side attempted to carve a small rear gate for easier access; chiseling bit by bit with steel drills took over twenty days to complete.
- A moat originally encircled the building 10 meters outside the walls, over 3 meters deep and 5 meters wide, connected to the village irrigation canals. Functioning both as a defensive city moat against bandits and a fish pond, it served dual purposes and was historically named the "Moat Pond". The moat remained intact four to five decades ago, but accumulated silt gradually shallowed the water and rendered it useless. The owners later filled it with earth and stone, though faint traces are still visible. Local elders recall that a drawbridge once spanned the front gate.
The rear wing of Fuxin Building was reconstructed roughly 200 years ago. Its central hall on the top floor once operated as a private academy. Ink inscriptions left by the Taiping Army line the right wall during the Tongzhi reign of the Qing Dynasty. Two well-preserved poems read:
Generals of the Heavenly Kingdom march forth,
To punish tyrants and comfort the people with loyal hearts.
I urge common folk not to cling to foolish delusions,
Hide deep in mountains and guard your lives well.
We burn no houses, slay no innocent lives,
Why would the masses harbor unjust hatred?
All four walks of life shall turn back to the righteous shore,
Honor the Heavenly Father to be virtuous men.
The verses confirm that Taiping troops were once stationed inside this tulou.
Jiqing Building – The Oldest Surviving Round Tulou with the Most Staircases
Erected in the 17th year of the Yongle reign of the Ming Dynasty (1419 AD), Jiqing Building stands 586 years old to this day. It is the oldest and most structurally distinctive round tulou preserved in Yongding.
Facing north with its back to the south, it covers 2,826 square meters with an outer ring diameter of 66 meters. The ground-floor walls are 1.6 meters thick, and the building stands 12.7 meters tall. It consists of a square ancestral hall core encircled by two concentric circular rings.
The outer ring rises four stories, with 52 rooms on the ground floor and 48 rooms per floor above, totaling 206 rooms. Seventy-two separate staircases connect all four floors, and nine observation platforms are set into the top outer walls.
Every room, staircase and partition wall within Jiqing Building is crafted from Chinese fir, joined entirely by mortise and tenon joints without a single iron nail. Together with the nearly 2-meter-thick rammed earthen outer walls, the entire structure has endured nearly 600 years of wind, frost, rain and snow, remaining fully intact for visitors to admire. Countless foreign tourists praise it sincerely, calling Jiqing Building "a hidden miracle of humanity tucked deep in the mountains".
Core Functions of Tulou
1. Wind Resistance & Earthquake Resistance
The outer walls of all round tulou are extremely thick and taper inward as they rise, wider at the base and narrower at the top, creating a centripetal force in accordance with physical principles. During rammed-earth construction, bamboo strips and fir slats are embedded within the walls (acting as modern steel reinforcement), boosting elasticity and tensile strength for remarkable seismic performance.
Yongding County has experienced seven powerful earthquakes throughout history, yet no massive tulou outer wall has ever collapsed.
2. Fire Prevention & Moisture Proofing
Most round tulou follow the Bagua Taiji Diagram layout from the I Ching. To contain fires, blue brick fire partition walls separate each trigram unit of the outer ring, preventing flames from spreading. Some buildings lay blue bricks over the third and fourth-floor floorboards, offering sound insulation as well as partial fire suppression. Two wells are dug inside most round tulou to provide emergency fire-fighting water.
Unlike square tulou with four blind corners, circular structures maximize sunlight absorption and natural ventilation. Constructed from earth and timber, both highly hygroscopic materials, tulou interiors effectively resist dampness. Locals often joke that residents living in tulou rarely suffer from arthritis or rheumatism.
3. Communal Clan Living
The four-story Chengqi Building holds over 400 rooms, accommodating sixty to seventy households with roughly 500–600 residents. Equipped with internal wells, bathrooms, latrines, grain mills, gardens, schools and dormitories, its construction area exceeds 5,000 square meters. Describing it as a miniature city is no exaggeration.
A local anecdote tells of two women arguing over whose tulou was larger at a village wedding feast. One said: "My home stands four stories high with four concentric rings and four hundred rooms up and down — how grand is my building!" The other replied: "My tulou is like a walled city; I’ve lived here three years yet still cannot recognize all its residents — which one is bigger?"
Upon walking home together, they realized they lived in the same building, and were actually sister-in-law and unmarried niece, residing on the eastern and western sides respectively.
Statistics show that staying one night with each household would take over two months (sixty to seventy families); sleeping one night in every room would occupy more than a year (over 400 chambers); and meeting one new resident each day would take nearly two years (500–600 inhabitants). Meanwhile, new brides move in and newborn children are born year after year — meaning one can never fully know every resident of the compound.
4. Security & Defense
Round tulou typically have four floors: the ground floor houses kitchens, dining halls, bathrooms and livestock sheds; the second floor serves as grain storage; bedrooms occupy the third and fourth floors. A giant circular tulou resembles an ancient Roman fortress with no blind spots. In the event of bandit or military raids, simply closing the main gate and securing key passages renders the entire complex impenetrable.
Main gates are forged from 20–30-centimeter thick fire-resistant hardwood, some reinforced with iron plating, with water tanks mounted above to douse fire attacks. No windows open onto the first and second floors of the outer ring, leaving invaders powerless once they reach the base. Even if besieged for a year or more, residents can sustain normal daily life as long as grain and firewood reserves hold out.
Beyond passive defensive features — single entry gates, 2–3-meter thick ground-floor walls and windowless lower floors — tulou designers integrated active defense systems including observation platforms and numerous staircases. When bandits approach, residents lock the main gate and quickly climb upstairs to counterattack invaders. Observation platforms enable full surveillance of surrounding terrain, while abundant staircases facilitate rapid transport of water, stones and lumber to upper levels for defense.
5. Ventilation & Natural Lighting
With a layout low at the center and high on the outer perimeter and expansive interior space, round tulou leverage physical tangent laws: smoke and haze sliding along outer walls will flow outward regardless of wind direction. Even air entering through gates or windows rebounds off inner walls to form circulating updrafts that rise skyward, continuously drawing in fresh air for excellent ventilation.
Each room on the outer ring aligns along the circle’s tangent, so over half the building’s surface receives sunlight no matter its orientation. The exceptionally thick rammed earthen walls (nearly 2 meters wide at the base, wide enough for a sedan car to drive across) deliver outstanding thermal insulation, creating a naturally warm winter and cool summer interior environment.
6. Economic & Eco-Friendly Design
Tulou construction relies solely on locally sourced earth and timber, fully recyclable materials. Even if demolished, the raw materials return to nature without polluting the surrounding environment — an unmatched advantage over modern construction materials such as steel, cement and brick, earning intense interest from environmental researchers worldwide.
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