Xiamen/Earth building

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This is one of my favorite trips in China, maybe because the people there is more kindness, maybe there is no such people, maybe the great food, maybe the exotic Earth Building, maybe it is near to Taiwan, maybe I understand the local dialect, anyway, I liked there very much.
Xiamen is a coastal city from Fujian province, there is lot of seafood, first of all, I loved the seafood, and Fujian province has a extraordinary culinary, inclusive that is one of main culinary in China, one of the most famous prate there "Fo Tiao Qiang", it means Buddha crossing the wall because the smell and taste of the food is so good that even Buddha can resist the food, and it is really tasteful.
Gulang island is a little island belong to the Xiamen, very comfortable and full of the music air, there is a music school in the island, you can hear the music around you when you are walking on the island, that really is a very nice environment to have the relaxing feeling. The island also was a place of so many oversea consulates, like England, Portugal, Germany, Spain, France, etc, that is why you can find a lot of occidental building there, and the mix of both culture in the same small island. Another interesting point on the small island is a Chinese army headquarter, probably because there is the nearest Chinese point to Taiwan.
The Earth Building was built in 1740, it is a huge house, normally it have a round form and can support more than hundred inhabitants to live, and this one we visited had more than 300 inhabitants in the past, and now it is around the 100, the young went to urban zone, basically only remained the old people there, doing the tea plantation and specialty there is Tie Guan Yin. The Earth Building is like a round fortress, the wall made by clay, it has 2,5 meters of thickness and 16 meters of height, 4 main doors to access the building, there is 16 independent units, each unit has 3 floors, 2 water wells in the middle. There is a lot of gadgets: a secret passage on the wall to integrate all independent units; the access to the upstairs has a locker from up side because the oldest one always live in the last floor of the unit, and in the traditional Chinese family the older one always have more power for decision; the hole on the first floor over the main door, used to extinguish the fire because the is only one can get fire from outside; the sound hole from outside for each unit to communicate with the inhabitant; the sewer system of all units are integrated and drained by a tunnel of 1,4 meter of diameter, it also is a secret passage can lead you to a river 2 km from the building.
Probably there are more interesting stuffs in the building, but it will expend a weeks to explore, and our host had a lot of works to do, so we just took walk around into the tea plantation, later we had a dinner with the host, that was a very simple, but very tasteful and comfortable with the Tie Guan Yin tea.
Back to Xiamen, we visited the Xiamen University, one of the best universities in China, inside the university I felt such good things, I remembered when I was in the university, I liked to be in that environment, the air likes full of knowledge, I really like to study more and more, go back to the university to study something else is my future goal for sure. By the way, the field of Xiamen university is really beautiful, and next to the university has the Putuo temple, a Buddhist temple, around there is famous by vegetarian food, combined the variety of ethnicity and Buddhism, China has one of the best vegetarian culinary of the world, it really worth to taste.

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