Fujian Tulou: Not One Site, and Not All Hakka

Fujian Tulou is not a place. That sounds pedantic, but it is the single most useful thing to understand before you book anything. There is no gate, no central village, no one ticket. What exists instead is a scatter of enormous earthen roundhouses across two prefectures of inland Fujian, grouped into clusters that charge separately, sit hours apart, and were not all built by the people the guidebooks credit.

Travellers routinely arrive expecting one afternoon and one entrance fee. They leave having seen a single crowded courtyard. So it is worth getting the geography — and the history — straight first.

What Fujian Tulou Actually Is

A tulou is a fortified communal dwelling of rammed earth, circular or square, built inward around an open courtyard. UNESCO inscribed the property in 2008 under criteria (iii), (iv) and (v). It comprises 46 buildings, raised between the 15th and 20th centuries, spread across roughly 120 kilometres of south-western Fujian, inland from the Taiwan Strait (UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2008).

The design is defensive, and unapologetically so. Several storeys high. One entrance. Windows only above the first floor. Each could house up to 800 people, with a well and a granary inside, so a clan could shut the door and simply wait out whatever was outside (UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2008).

The inscribed 46 sit in three counties: Yongding, under Longyan city, plus Nanjing and Hua’an, both under Zhangzhou. And they are a fraction of what stands. Nanjing county alone counts more than 15,000 tulou, of which just 20 made the World Heritage list (People’s Government of Fujian Province, 2023).

The Fujian Tulou Are Not All Hakka

Nearly every English guide calls these “Hakka roundhouses”. That is half right, and the half that is wrong is more interesting.

The Hakka, a migrant people who moved south over centuries, built the tulou of Yongding. But the Hoklo — the Minnan people of southern Fujian, a different group with a different language — built many of those in Hua’an and Nanjing. Hua’an’s tulou are described as clear evidence of the Minnan tradition, not the Hakka one (China Association for Promoting Democracy, 2019).

You can see it from inside. Broadly, two layouts exist:

• Inner-corridor type. Shared galleries ring each floor, linked by communal staircases. Kitchens below, granaries above, bedrooms higher still. Everyone walks past everyone.
• Unit type. Each household owns a vertical slice — its own door, its own courtyard entrance, its own staircase — with no internal connection to the neighbours.

One is communal to the point of having no privacy. The other stacks private houses into a ring. From the outside they look nearly identical, which is exactly why the confusion persists.

A caution, though, because the neat version of this story is too neat. Layout and ethnicity do not map cleanly onto each other — plenty of unit-type tulou around Zhangzhou house Hakka families. Treat the two categories as architectural first, ethnic second.

Why Fujian Tulou Is Worth the Detour

Because people still live in them. That is the whole answer, really. These are not evacuated monuments; they are apartment blocks that happen to be four hundred years old, with laundry strung across the courtyard and chickens underfoot.

And the engineering deserves its reputation. Load-bearing walls of rammed earth, up to roughly 1.8 metres thick at the base, tapering as they rise, standing four storeys without steel. Chengqi Lou at Gaobei runs four concentric rings, the outer one carrying 72 rooms per floor. Counts of its total rooms vary between about 370 and 400, depending on who is doing the counting and what they count.

The Best Time to Visit Fujian Tulou

Spring and autumn, comfortably. March to May, or September to November — mild, drier, and the terraced fields look their best. Autumn adds persimmons drying on the balconies, which is the photograph everyone wants.

Avoid the rainy season from late May, and avoid high summer, which is hot and heavy and wet. Then there are the crowds. National Day week, from 1 to 7 October, and Chinese New Year turn Hongkeng and Tianluokeng into coach parks. If those dates are your only option, sleep in the villages and walk out early, before the buses arrive.

How to Get to Fujian Tulou from Xiamen

Xiamen is the usual gateway, and pairs naturally with a day on Gulangyu Island before you head inland. From there the route splits by county.

• For Nanjing county (Tianluokeng, Yunshuiyao): high-speed rail to Nanjing station, then roughly 1.5 hours by bus or car. The station is nowhere near the tulou. This surprises people.
• For Yongding (Hongkeng, Gaobei, Chuxi): high-speed rail to Longyan, then a coach or car onward, again well over an hour.
• For Hua’an (Dadi): the least served by public transport. Most visitors drive or hire a car.

Journey times shift with the timetable, so treat those as approximations and check before you travel. Yongding and Nanjing are separate zones in separate prefectures. Combining both in one day is theoretically possible and practically miserable.

Which Fujian Tulou Clusters Deserve Your Time

Here is the ticketing reality, and it is the thing most guides bury. Fujian’s own scenic-area registry lists Yongding and Nanjing as two separate 5A areas, and Hua’an as a 4A area entirely (Fujian Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, 2022). Three zones. Three managements. Individual clusters within them ticket separately too — reckon on roughly 50 to 90 RMB each, and confirm current prices through official channels rather than resellers.

• Hongkeng, Yongding. Home to Zhencheng Lou, the 1912 double-ring “Prince of Tulou” (Fujian Provincial People’s Government, 2025). The most developed cluster, and the most crowded.
• Gaobei, Yongding. Chengqi Lou, the “King of Tulou”. Four rings, genuinely staggering from the courtyard floor.
• Chuxi, Yongding. Thirty-six tulou terraced up a hillside. Quieter, and the better photograph.
• Tianluokeng, Nanjing. The famous one: four round tulou around a square, nicknamed “four dishes and a soup”.
• Yunshuiyao and Taxia, Nanjing. A riverside village and the inscribed Huaiyuan Lou and Hegui Lou. Stay overnight here if you can.
• Dadi, Hua’an. Eryi Lou, a vast Qing unit-type ring. Barely touristed, and the strongest sense of ordinary life.

If you have one day, pick one county. If you have two, do Nanjing and sleep in Yunshuiyao. If you have three, add Yongding.

What to Eat Around the Tulou

Yongding cooks Hakka food, and it is heartier and saltier than coastal Fujianese cuisine. The dish everyone names first is Hakka stuffed tofu, niang doufu — tofu blocks packed with minced pork, braised. Beyond that, look for taro dumplings, wrapped in a skin of mashed taro and sweet potato flour, and the local beef, which turns up as beef balls and as niu san cui, a crunchy trio of beef cuts (Yongding News, 2018).

Dry-steamed farmhouse chicken is worth ordering, though locals will tell you the point of the dish is the broth beneath it, not the bird. Also try laoshu ban, thick rice noodles tapered at both ends, named — accurately, if unhelpfully — after mice.

Practical Tips for Visiting Fujian Tulou

• Payment. WeChat Pay and Alipay work almost everywhere, including ticket gates. Carry some cash for village stalls. See our guide on how to pay in China.
• Booking. Reserve tickets and rooms ahead in October and at Chinese New Year. Our notes on booking China attractions explain the reservation systems.
• Language. English signage is thin, and English speakers thinner. A translation app matters here more than in Xiamen.
• Transport. Hiring a driver for a day is common, and often cheaper than the alternatives once two of you split it.
• Shoes. Cluster paths are stone, uneven, and slick after rain.

Common Mistakes at Fujian Tulou

1. Treating it as a day trip from Xiamen. Four hours of round-trip transport buys you two hours in one courtyard. Stay a night.
2. Assuming one ticket covers everything. It covers one cluster. Yongding, Nanjing and Hua’an are administered separately, and Hua’an is not even inside the 5A designation.
3. Seeing only Hongkeng. It is the most restored and the most commercial. Chuxi, Taxia and Dadi feel like places rather than exhibits.
4. Forgetting that these are homes. The upper floors and back rooms are private. Ask before you photograph residents, and do not wander upstairs uninvited.
5. Calling everything Hakka. In Hua’an, and in much of Nanjing, you are looking at Minnan work. The distinction matters to the people who live there.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Is Fujian Tulou one ticket or several? Several. Yongding and Nanjing are separate 5A scenic areas, Hua’an is a separate 4A area, and individual clusters within each charge their own admission. No single ticket covers the whole property.
2. How many tulou are UNESCO listed? Forty-six buildings, inscribed in 2008, across Yongding, Nanjing and Hua’an counties. Thousands of other tulou stand outside the listing, including more than 15,000 in Nanjing county alone.
3. Were all the tulou built by the Hakka? No. The Hakka built those of Yongding. Many in Hua’an and Nanjing were built by Minnan people, whose unit-type layout gives each family a private staircase rather than a shared corridor.
4. Can you stay overnight in a tulou? Yes. Several families run guesthouses inside tulou, particularly around Taxia and Yunshuiyao. Rooms are basic and the walls are thick. Book ahead in peak season.
5. How long do you need? Two days is the sensible minimum for one county with an overnight stay. Three lets you cross into a second county without rushing.

Get the geography right and the place opens up. You walk through a single gate in a wall thick enough to stop a siege, and find a village inside — circular, four storeys, still occupied, still cooking. Fujian Tulou rewards the traveller who gives it two days and resists the urge to see everything. Pick a county. Stay the night. Let the buses leave without you.

References

China Association for Promoting Democracy. (2019). 异彩纷呈的福建土楼 [The many forms of Fujian tulou]. Retrieved from https://www.mj.org.cn/hkxy/jpwz/201911/t20191125_106536.htm

Fujian Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism. (2022). 福建省A级旅游景区名录 [Register of A-level tourist attractions in Fujian province]. Retrieved from https://wlt.fujian.gov.cn/zwgk/sjfb/cgcx/AJJQ/202201/t20220112_5814037.htm

Fujian Provincial People’s Government. (2025). Fujian Tulou (Yongding) Scenic Area. Retrieved from https://www.fujian.gov.cn/english/cultureandtravel/attractions/202501/t20250107_6619446.htm

People’s Government of Fujian Province. (2023). 南靖土楼：要保下来更要活起来 [Nanjing tulou: preservation is not enough, they must stay alive]. Retrieved from https://www.fujian.gov.cn/zwgk/ztzl/sxzygwzxsgzx/sdjj/wvjj/202308/t20230817_6231276.htm

UNESCO World Heritage Centre. (2008). Fujian Tulou. Retrieved from https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1113/

Yongding News. (2018). 游永定土楼，吃客家土菜 [Visit Yongding’s tulou, eat Hakka country food]. Retrieved from https://www.fjydnews.com/2018-08/30/content_836561.htm