Blogs from Yongding, Fujian, China, Asia

Hi All, I slept really well but there's something odd staying in the tulou room, the floor slopes from back to front it's quite strange. I had an appointment with my motorcycle friend to take me out at 9 am. It was spitting with rain, another typhoon, but at least it was a lot cooler than the day before. He took me first to the viewing point were I could see tulou all the way down the valley, round ones, square ones and even a U-shaped one. A really incredible view with the rice terracing and tea plantations. The natural beauty is incredible. We then went to visit Huanji Lou. This was the most beautiful of all the ones that we visited. There was nobody selling gifts, tea etc. just the people who lived there, and ... read more

It was spring festival holiday in China. This involves endless firecrackers being let off in the streets throughout the week and over a billion people travelling to their family homes. It was recommended to us to avoid travelling since all public transportation are booked up and relatively more expensive than usual. Perhaps travel on bike would be a good idea. I got further inspired while on one of my longish bike rides in the mountains surrounding Fuzhou, when I came across a guy biking home for the spring festival. He was going to Gutain, just 130km up the road! He had no pannier bags, just a ruksack attached to a rack on the back of his bike. I stopped and had lunch with him, which was quite handy because he ordered some decent vegetarian food. His ... read more

Landed in Xiamen in the morning today. Just before the plane touches the ground, we could see the serpentine bridge between the island of Xiamen and the main land. And after a painful search for a long distance bus to take us to Longyan we found ourselves, mom and I, sitting in one, crossing over to the main land via the same bridge. We hardly saw much of Xiamen, except maybe the traffic jam because of which we could have missed our bus from the travel distribution centre. (No idea why they prefer referring to us like cattle, distributing travellers?) Anyway, the bus was better than what I expected it to be, you see Longyan was supposed to be a really small town. We crossed some lovely stretches of hills, which slowly turned into layers of ... read more

We were looking forward to some more rural experiences with all of the big city travel that we've been doing recently, especially before we get to Hong Kong. Yongding county is mentioned several times in our guidebook and seemed like just the place to get this rural experience. The big draw here is the Tulou roundhouse buildings of the Hakka people which have mostly been abandoned, but are now used for tourism and many are even converted into guesthouses where tourists can get the authentic experience. We hopped on a direct bus from Xiamen to Yongding expectiong to have to back-track to Liulian which is the most convenient place from which to visit the Tulous. Instead the bus stopped apparently in the middle of nowhere and we were ushered off as the ticket lady exclaimed, "Tulou!" ... read more

Hakka village, Liulian After the mountain climbing in Huang Shan Chris spotted a new destination for us on the map of China. Hakka villages with special tolou houses in South East China. So we took some adventurous train and bus rides to arrive to the middle of nowhere village of Liulian (I bet you wont find it on the map). The village is famous of the constructions by Hakka people, they built huge so-called tolou houses, where they could fit few hundred people. This tradition came from the era of the clans, where clans were living in close communities. In order to protect themselves from the bandits and wild animals the clans built these round or rectangular or oval shaped buildings, which walls were made of bamboo sticks, glutinous rice and some wood chips. The bedrooms ... read more