Trip: Guests in a Guest Home

I went with Ashley to Fujian Province for a few days, and one of the more interesting experiences was venturing out to rural Xiamen to stay in one of the Hakka "Tulou" (土楼 - literally, "earthen building") structures. Although Ashley is Hakka, she could not understand the dialect of the region we were traveling in. And many of the occupants of the tulou spoke not Hakka, but Min-nan (the dialect of Xiamen and Taiwan).

The Hakka are an interesting group. Although considered a subgroup of the majority Han ethnicity, the Hakka have often been treated as a minority and are sometimes referred to as the "Jews of China" owing to their diaspora triggered by historical wars. These resulted in their displacement throughout Southern China and Southeast Asia. Many ethnic Chinese in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia are Hakka. The word Hakka itself (客家) literally means "guest families", the moniker assigned to them by local residents where they settled. Continued persecution and tensions over land was a large part of the drive behind the fortress-like Tulou structures. Wells located inside guarantee a supply of fresh water. Strength in numbers also helped, as each structure housed over 20 nuclear families, usually part of one extended family. With many younger people traveling into the towns and cities for work, most Tulou seem underoccupied and it's not too difficult to negotiate lodging with the occupants. We paid USD 10 for our "renovated" room with electricity and a television (the Communists have worked hard to wire up the remotest outposts to their propaganda machine). But that's the rural China equivilent of 5-star pricing.

I highly recommend a visit, and can refer the sites we visited. For me, the trip helped to stimulate some of my views on Chinese rural land reform.