Wang Qijun, Ancient Chinese Architecture: Vernacular Dwellings, New York, 2000. Fujian Tulou (China) Technical Evaluation Mission: 29 August-3 September 2007 No 1113 Additional information requested and received from the State Party: ICOMOS has sent a letter to the State Party on 20 December 2007 on the following issues: Official name as proposed by the State Party: Fujian Tulou - Extension of the buffer zone for Zhenfuou (Yongding); Location: Yongding County, - The reasons for moving people out of the core and Nanjing County, buffer zones and on the overall policy for sustaining the and Hua’an County, buildings as living units rather than museums; Fujian Province, People’s Republic of China - Further information on upgrading tulou services; Brief description: - Further information on the overall approach to the In lush mountainous areas in the south-west of Fujian landscape and on how an authentic farmed landscape can province, inland from the Taiwan Strait, large fortified be sustained as an appropriate setting for the tulou. communal clan houses, mostly built of rammed earth, and known as tulou (earthen houses), are set amongst The State Party responded with supplementary fields of rice, tea and tobacco below surrounding sub- information on 25 February 2008. These responses are tropical forest of pine, Chinese fir, cypress and camphor included in the report below. trees. Date of ICOMOS approval of this report: 11 March 2008 These multi-storey, inward-looking, circular or square dwellings were designed for communal living with family units of up to five storeys arranged around a 2. THE PROPERTY courtyard. Each housed a complete clan, of up to 800 people, and functioned much as a village unit. Description Some tulou may have been constructed in the 12th and Tulou (or earthen houses) are very large scale communal 13th centuries; the tradition continued until the late 1900s. houses, built for defense around a central open courtyard Several remained in the ownership of the same family and with few windows to the outside and only one over 600 years. The 46 nominated tulou, spread out in ten entrance. Often up to five storeys high, their tall fortified sites across some 120km, represent around three mud walls are capped by tiled roofs with wide over- thousand surviving clan houses. hanging eaves. Housing a whole clan, which could have as many as 800 people and up to four generations, they Category of property: functioned as village units and were known as a ‘little kingdom for the family’ or ‘bustling small city’. In terms of the categories of cultural property set out in Article 1 of the Convention, this is a serial nomination of Developed by people migrating south into the fertile groups of buildings. valleys of Fujian, Jiangxi and Guangdong provinces, cohesive clan structure and a comparatively weak state seem to have produced the conditions under which these 1. BASIC DATA buildings came into existence. Some tulou may date from 13th or 14th century or even earlier. In the 17th and 18th Included in the Tentative List: 31 October 2002 centuries some of the largest and most elaborate structures were produced. By the late 18th and 19th International Assistance from the World Heritage Fund centuries the tulou were associated with the processing of for preparing the Nomination: None tobacco and tea. They reflected the great wealth generated by the industry and often had western style Date received by the decoration. The last tulou were constructed in the late World Heritage Centre: 11 January 2007 1900s – possibly the very last in 1978 – and many of these were funded by overseas Chinese. Background: This is a new nomination. The giant-sized houses dominate the narrow valleys. Consultations: ICOMOS has consulted its International Some houses are circular in form while others are Scientific Committee on Vernacular Architecture rectangular or square. Most have walls of rammed earth (CIAV). which taper towards the top – which is sometimes only half the width of the base. The tulou often took several Literature consulted: years to build and were constructed storey by storey. Some later developed more complex plans as inner rings Yu Dehui (ed.), Yongding Hakka earth buildings of China, were added. Beijing, 2000. 20 Although their siting appears somewhat random the The nominated property consists of the following: layout is strongly according to Feng Shui principles – with the houses being built around auspicious places, in Yongding County terms of their relationship to streams running through the valleys and the surrounding hills. • Chuxi Cluster:10 tulou • Hongkeng Cluster:7 tulou Within, the buildings were divided vertically between • Gaobei Cluster: 4 tulou families with each having two or three rooms on every • Yanxiang Lou tulou floor. Some tulou had galleried corridors connecting the • Zhenfu Lou tulou rooms at each level. This arrangement prevails in villages of the Hakka communities. Tulou lived in by the Fulao Nanjing County community reflect greater family privacy with each family having a separate entrance from the central space • Tianluokeng Cluster:5 tulou and stairs to upper floors. Nevertheless in these buildings • Hekeng Cluster 13 tulou a corridor was also built at high level to allow joint • Huaiyuan Lou tulou defence. • Hegui Lou tulou In contrast to the plain, defensive and mostly unadorned exteriors, inside many tulou were laid out for comfort and Hua’an County enlightenment, particularly the communal rooms. In the centre were built one or two storey ancestral halls, often • Dadi Cluster 3 tulou highly decorated with wooden carvings and paintings. The tulou usually have a central axis aligning the main These are described separately: gate, ancestral hall and rear lobby. Some tulou included school rooms for women, who could not be educated Yongding County outside the clan building, and rooms for music and entertainment, and a few have small gardens outside the • Chuxi Cluster: 10 tulou walls where young scholars and warriors did exercises and read books and where the owner came for his leisure. These tulou are surrounded by mountains up to 1,200 Many are enlivened by tablets with writings that reflect metres high, terraced at their lower levels. Built either education, culture, respect for ancestors and clan side of small ravine, the tulou are connected by paths cohesion. paved with blue stones. In the centre of the settlement is an ancestral hall. The Chuxi tulou are variously Each storey had a clear function. In tulou with galleries, rectangular, square, circular, oval and hexagonal in plan. kitchens and dining rooms were on the ground floor, The earliest tulou, Jiqing Lou was constructed between storage rooms on the first floor; and bedrooms above, 1403 and 1424, and has a double ring form. It is also the while tulou without galleries had utility rooms on the largest of four stories in height, 66 metres in diameters ground floor, bedrooms above and storage on the top and covering an area of 2,826 square metres. Two other tulou were built in the 18th century, four in the 19th floor – some with blue tiled platforms on which crops th could be dried. century and three in the 20 century, the last in 1978. The main building material for the walls was mud – • Hongkeng Cluster of 7 tulou sometimes rammed in layers, at other times made into bricks and sometimes reinforced with wood. Nearly all Hongkeng is a long linear settlement with many tulou the tulou have stone foundations. arranged either side of a central stream. In 2005 there were 2,413 people in 643 households living in the village As they accommodated very large numbers of people and and engaged in farming. The seven main tulou are usually only had one entrance, fire was an ever present surrounded by smaller buildings including an ancestral danger and several of the nominated tulou have been hall, and a temple and a waterwheel. rebuilt after devastating fires. Great care was taken in th some tulou, particularly those dating from the 19th The tulou date from the 18 century to 1937 and reflect century, to make the structures as fireproof as possible several different types of plan. One, Guiju Lou, through inserting brick dividing walls between the constructed in 1834 is of square plan and especially large domestic units and brick floors – which collapsed when covering 6,000 square metres. It is also particularly the building was on fire, spontaneously putting out the elaborate with a carved and painted central ancestral hall flames. Most tulou had water boxes positioned over the and the floors of the upper rooms paved with fireproof main gates. grey bricks. The serial nomination consists of 46 tulou in ten sites, in Zhencheng Lou, built in 1912 combines Chinese and three main areas up to 120 km apart. Six sites have Western styles. With its tall moonstone columns, the clusters of more than one tulou, and four sites have one ancestral hall reflects architectural features of ancient individual tulou. Each of the ten sites is enclosed by a Greece. It serves as a communal place for the area and is buffer zone. used for weddings, funerals, banquets etc. 21 • Gaobei Cluster: 4 tulou Shengping Lou, square in plan, is unusual in being higher at the rear and lower at the front and bears similarities to Gaobei village housed 306 people in 2005. As with the courtyard houses in neighbouring regions. other settlements, the tulou are built around a stream. Only part of the settlement is within the nominated area. • Huaiyuan Lou tulou The earliest tulou dates from the 16th century, a second large circular one covering 5,376 square meters is from This tulou was built between 1905 and 1909 by a the 17th century and the two remaining ones were built in member of the Jian family who had made money in 1931 and 1962.