The Song and Yuan Dynasties were the formation stage of Fujian Tulou. The early earth buildings were small in scale, simple in structure, mostly without stone walls and rough in decoration, and basically square and rectangular in form. The earliest record of "tulou" is the imperial edict "Rebuilding the Foreground Record" in the Japanese Cabinet Library, which records the fact that tulou was built at the junction of Yong 'an and Liancheng in western Fujian in the thirty-eighth year of Ming Jiajing (1559). ?

In the Ming Dynasty, with the development of economy and culture, residents paid more and more attention to education, and it gradually became a trend to set up learning museums and academies to persuade people to enter school. Through the imperial examination, officials emerged constantly. These official residences, which have made great progress, are built with earth buildings according to the architectural regulations of Datong, the capital of the Central Plains, with increasingly sophisticated architectural forms and diversified functions.

architectural feature

1, shape

Fujian tulou is a collective building built with soil as the wall, which is round, semi-circular, square, quadrilateral, pentagonal, chair-shaped and dustpan-shaped. , and has its own characteristics. Tulou was originally square, with palace style and mansion style, with different postures. It is not only strange, but also mysterious and solid.

The building is piled with food, livestock and wells. Because the square earth building is directional, the corner is dark, and the ventilation and lighting are different, the Hakkas designed a round earth building with good ventilation and lighting. Among the existing earth buildings, the round one is the most striking, and the locals call it round building or round village. ?

2. Structure

There are many types of earth buildings in Fujian, one of which is the system of upper, middle and lower halls arranged in depth along the central axis. This kind of earth building, the lower hall is generally the entrance and exit, placed in the front; The nave is in the center, which is a place for family gatherings and welcoming guests. Shangtang is the innermost place where ancestral tablets are enshrined. In addition to the unique structure, the window sill, porch and cornice inside the earth building are also "wonderful flowers" in China residential buildings.