Dingle Speaks

Last stop on the Tulou tour was Taxia village, which we almost didn’t make at all. We’d heard rumours about it being closed during the day because of “roadworks” on the way. Finally when it came to the time to move there the driver smugly announced that it was closed so we should head back. Foolishness when H was in the car, after a brief minute or so of “chat” we were on the road to Taxia (she pointed out that we’d paid for the day and we’d go back when we were ready, if we couldn’t go to Taxia we’d visit another cluster of tulou 80km further away from Xiamen… you’ve never seen anyone get the car started so quickly).

On the way to Taxia the driver told us the real problem (as he understood it). I mentioned on a previous post that apparently the villagers only get paid 200 rmb per year to endure their houses becoming tourist attractions and apparently at Taxia they’ve decided that enough is enough and are trying to get this increased by stopping the cooperation with the local government. In return Taxia is reported as closed by just about everyone until this is all resolved.

So, there were no roadworks and we basically had Taxia to ourselves for an hour… Unfortunately it had started raining quite heavily and we were already quite tired from all the walking at Tianluokeng and Yuchanglou so we didn’t explore as much as we might. Anyway, here are some pics:

Taxia is basically a large picturesque village of tulou located either side of a valley river

the tulou were largely uncommercialised

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Second stop of the day was at Yuchanglou Tulou, which is apparently famous for its leaning structure.

The first impression of this tulou was that it’s huge compared to the tulou at Tianluocheng, also it has an ancestral hall at the centre. As with a couple of the tulou at Tianluocheng it’s pretty commercialised, everyone has a market stall selling the usual nik-naks, there were signs everywhere saying that no tourists could go upstairs which was a shame but understandable I guess, if a coachload of tourists all went upstairs at the same time the whole thing could come tumbling down (as we’d find out a few minutes later). We took a few pics but there wasn’t much here to hold our interest, the arrival of a coach tour made our minds up and it was time to move on.

aggressive smoker

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On day 3 in Xiamen we went to visit some Tulou (traditional Hakka earth buildings).

These are quite a way from Xiamen (150km or so) so we actually considered a group tour for a short while, I blame a momentary lapse of sensibility, but after looking at their schedule we thankfully decided otherwise. They were all something like 3 hours of travel followed by a rapid visit of various tulou with about 10 or 15 minutes at each, an hour for lunch, then 3 hours back to Xiamen again.

Actually deciding which tulou to visit was the first headache, there’s something like 20,000 of these traditional Hakka houses in Fujian province, but we opted for Tianluokeng, which is a World Heritage Site and probably the most famous (as well as being a national AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA tourist site or something like that)

So H looked for a driver and eventually found us one at the reasonable price of 750rmb for the whole day (bearing in mind the distance to be traveled), which was obviously considerably more than the group tour, but without the rushed schedule, stops at silk factories/jade museums and megaphones, we could take our own time and decide our own agenda.

The guy picked us up at 8am and we set off for Nanjing County (not that Nanjing). In the few minutes before H took over the entire rear seat and fell asleep she had plenty of time to figure out the driver, “he is too pale” she said, “he must have some kind of disease”, which is Chinese for “I wish I was that pale”. Diseased or not he could drive reasonably well enough but had a dreadful taste in music which H soon put an end to as she was nodding off.

Anyway, let’s forget about the journey, nothing of interest happened apart from to say that it was a loooong journey. After 2 hours we started climbing and I figured we were nearly there, but we just kept going and going on a road thankfully devoid of coach tours (we’d timed the trip well for the first weekend after schools went back and this was the monday morning).

Roadworks on the way to Tianluokeng

We finally arrived and paid our 90RMB entrance fee to the Tulou area and continued driving for another 20 minutes or so before the driver finally pulled over and indicated the viewing point across the road. We got out for the first view of Tianluokeng.

Tulou are either round or square. The story goes that when the US first sent up the spy satellites they became convinced that China had constructed thousands of missile silos all over Fujian, all ready for it to kick off in Taiwan..

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Day 3 in Xiamen (IIVB) and so far so good, although to be honest we’ve been a little bit meh… about xiamen (IIVB) so far. More about that later I guess.

Anyway, today we hired a driver to take us out to see some Tulou close to Zhanzhou, we’re currently en-route. I’d tell you where but google maps is all in Chinese and H is asleep and not in the mood for helping (to be fair she probably would have been until the 3rd or 4th time i pushed strands of her hair up her nostrils, now i’m in no doubt that she’s not to disturbed until we arrive..). Anyway, it’s close to some palm trees:

The weather forecast is pretty bad but fingers crossed that the rain holds off, will hopefully get lots of pics to post when I get back!