On my second day in Xiamen, my group of ECNU international students was taken three hours away form Xiamen to visit the home of the Hakka People (客家民族), one of China's 56 ethnic groups. The particular Hakka community we visited, the Fujian Tulou Earthen Buildings site, is one of China's many UNESCO World Heritage Sites. We did have some delays in getting there though; one of the roads was ripped up for construction so it took us about half an hour just to pass that small stretch of street, eventually though we did make it to the site. The Tulou buildings are Earthen buildings built to protect the Hakka people from the roving bandits and wild animals that were common in the mountains of Imperial China. Each Hakka clan would have their own Tulou building that house all the essentials for relatively comfortable living at the time, such as water wells and Buddhist temples. Since most bandits just wanted to get the booty quickly and leave, they were unwilling to besiege the fortified Tulou buildings. The site was interesting I guess, I got a lot of good photos and the Fujian Tulou buildings were defiantly neat but I don't know if it was worth the six hours on the bus there and back to see them. Walking around the site, it was clear that many other people weren't willing to make the drive. While the buildings are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a China National Tourism Authority AAAAA Tourist Site, for China there were hardly any people there. It felt like Zhangjiajie got more tourists in the off season than the Fujian Tulou did in far better weather. If you compare the Fujian Tulou to the number of tourists China's really famous world heritage sites get, like the Forbidden City of Beijing or the Terracotta Army of Xi'an, the Fujian Tulou felt down right abandon. For both lunch and dinner I had Hakka food. The Hakka were traditionally an agrarian people and their salty vegetable biased foods reflect this. I wasn't super into our lunch, I guess we went to a touristy restaurant that knew none of us would ever come back there for the food. Dinner was actually really good, the local Hakka restaurant in Xiamen proper was tasty and seemed thrilled to have such a large group of foreign customers. The food served for both lunch and dinner weren't pretty, I can't picture the Great Qing Emperor digging down on a plate of the tofu we had for lunch or the eggplant we had for dinner. It was all filling though which is what you want after a long day in the field. All in all, I guess I am glad I went if for no other reason than I can say I did.
1 Comment
Dad
4/24/2017 03:25:36 am
I agree. Dinner looks better than lunch and the Hakka site does not appear to be one of the great tourist attractions of Asia
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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