Special Edition #1: Living Inside FUjian's Tulou
Junlin Yang
I first slept inside a tulou in Grade 8.
Four years later, I somehow ended up back in almost the same part of Fujian, this time for my Y12 school trip, with different classmates, different teachers, and a place that already felt strangely familiar.
I remembered the river immediately. Small stone steps cut across the water, connecting one side of the village to the other. I remembered the tulous scattered between the mountains, some round and enormous, others square or shaped more like traditional Chinese courtyard homes. Even the food brought back memories.
Coming back made me realize how much of this place I had carried with me since my first trip.
On both visits, some of my favorite memories were also the least serious ones. We roasted marshmallows and made s'mores. We watched traditional singing and dancing at night. On my most recent trip, I biked 20 consecutive kilometres around the area for the first time, which sounded much more fun before I actually started cycling uphill. We hiked through the nearby mountains and came back exhausted enough to make the local Hakka food taste even better.
This time, though, I also met someone who made me see the tulou differently.
His name was Stephen, and the tulou we were staying in was his home.
A House Built for a Family
Tulou, 土楼, literally means “earthen building,” although that translation barely explains the scale of some of them.
Across southwestern Fujian, families constructed these multi-storey buildings from rammed earth, timber and other local materials over several centuries. Many were designed around a central courtyard and housed an entire clan. Their thick outer walls, limited entrances and high exterior windows also gave communities protection in rural areas where security could be uncertain. Some of the largest tulous could accommodate hundreds of people under one roof.
People often associate tulou with the huge circular buildings that appear in photographs, but their designs vary considerably. Square tulous exist alongside circular ones, and Fuyulou, 福裕楼, where we stayed, looks different again.
Fuyulou sits in Hongkeng Village in Yongding. Construction began around 1880 during the Qing Dynasty, after three Lin brothers, Lin Deshan, Lin Zhongshan and Lin Renshan, built their wealth through the local tobacco and tobacco-knife business. The building follows the 五凤楼, or “Five Phoenix,” style, with different sections rising gradually toward the back. Its layout allowed the brothers' families to remain part of one larger household and still maintain their own living areas.
In 2008, the Fujian Tulou were inscribed onto the UNESCO World Heritage List. The designation covers 46 buildings across several clusters, including the Hongkeng Tulou Cluster where Fuyulou stands. UNESCO describes the tulou as an exceptional example of communal living and a building tradition that developed over centuries in the mountainous landscape of Fujian.
Reading this history makes Fuyulou sound like something preserved behind a museum barrier.
Living there feels very different.
Wooden floorboards creak when people walk upstairs. Families still cook and eat inside. Guests drag suitcases into rooms where generations of the same family have lived before them. The building is more than 140 years old, but people are still deciding what its next chapter looks like.
Stephen is one of them.
Leaving His Laojia
Stephen is the sixth-generation owner of Fuyulou Changdi Inn, 常棣客栈, and his family has owned the house for generations.
He did not always plan to stay there.
When we spoke, Stephen told us that he had left his 老家, or hometown, and gone to Dongguan to work in a shoe factory.
His story is familiar across many rural parts of China. For decades, young people have left villages and smaller towns for cities in search of jobs and a different kind of life. Stephen understood the appeal. He told us that he actually really liked living in the city. There was always somewhere to go after work and something to do with friends.
I liked hearing him admit that.
Stories about people returning to the countryside can become overly sentimental, as if anyone who cares about their hometown should naturally want to stay there forever. Stephen had experienced both choices. He enjoyed the opportunities of the city, then eventually made the decision to come home.
When he returned to Fuyulou, he began helping turn part of the family home into accommodation for visitors.
Running a guesthouse inside a Qing Dynasty building came with some fairly modern problems.
Rooms needed better facilities. Parts of the house had to be carefully adapted to make staying there practical for visitors. Even after all of that work, Stephen still needed customers.
At the beginning, there were very few.
From Word of Mouth to the Internet
Stephen told us that the guesthouse initially depended almost entirely on word of mouth. People came because someone else told them about it, which made growth slow and unpredictable.
Then online travel platforms changed the situation.
As internet booking became more common, Stephen learned how to list the guesthouse online and use platforms that could reach travellers far beyond Fujian. Today, Fuyulou Changdi Inn appears across major Chinese and international travel sites, and reviews describe guests arriving from overseas and being welcomed by Stephen in English.
The same house that once sheltered one extended family could suddenly be discovered by someone searching for accommodation from another country.
I found this part of his story especially interesting because technology is often discussed as something that pulls people away from rural places. In Stephen's case, it helped make returning home more viable.
Tourism can create its own problems for heritage sites. A living community can easily become something visitors pass through, photograph and leave. Fuyulou still has to function as a home, a protected historic building and a place that welcomes paying guests.
Stephen seemed very aware of this balance.
The part he talked about most enthusiastically was his culture.
He told us how unique he had eventually realized his own heritage was. Growing up around tulous can make them feel ordinary. Meeting people who had travelled across China, or across the world, just to see his home changed the way he looked at it.
He was incredibly proud of being able to share it.
For him, coming home eventually became about much more than running a hotel. Every group of visitors gave him another chance to explain the building, introduce people to Hakka traditions and share a place his family had cared for across generations.
A 2023 China Tourism News feature described Stephen posting visitors' photos and stories and comparing their arrival to relatives coming to visit.
After meeting him, that description made sense.
Coming Back Again
My relationship with the tulou is obviously very different from Stephen's. I am a visitor. He grew up with this history around him and now carries part of the responsibility for its future.
Still, I think returning changed both of our relationships with the place.
During my first trip in Grade 8, I mainly remember how exciting everything felt. Sleeping inside a centuries-old building was cool. Crossing a river on stones was cool. Walking into a giant circular tulou and looking all the way up at the wooden balconies was definitely cool.
By Y12, I started paying more attention to the people who actually kept these places alive.
Fuyulou has survived for more than a century because generation after generation found a reason to keep using it. Its purpose has changed along the way. A house built for three brothers and their descendants now welcomes school groups and travellers from around the world. Bathrooms and internet access have entered spaces designed long before either existed.
Some parts of the experience, though, feel remarkably continuous.
People still gather around food. Conversations still fill the courtyards. Someone still has to look after the building when the visitors go home.
I have now been lucky enough to make two completely different sets of memories in the tulous. My Grade 8 classmates belong to one version of this place. My Y12 friends and teachers belong to another. Somewhere between the cycling, the mountains, the performances, the river and far too much good food, Fujian became one of the few places from a school trip that I genuinely wanted to return to.
Stephen left Fuyulou before choosing to come back.
I left after my first visit and somehow found my way back too.
Maybe a place becomes meaningful when you realize you would still choose to return after the trip is already over.
