In 2008, Fujian Tulou was listed as a World Heritage Site, which was a world sensation, but not all of them are World Heritage Sites. In Fujian province, there are about 30,000 Tulou of various kinds, but only 46 of them are listed as World Heritage Sites, which are commonly known as “six groups of four buildings”.
Among the six clusters and four buildings, there are three Tulou clusters and two Tulou buildings located in Yongding County, which is truly the first county of Fujian Tulou. Zhenfu Lou is one of the “Four Buildings” listed as a World Heritage Site. Each Tulou has a name, but it is not easy to remember too many of them, so they are given a memorable name, Zhenfu Lou is also called “Tulou Princess”.
Zhenfu Lou is located in Hukeng Town on the bank of the South River, a beautiful round earthen building with a beautiful figure. The building was built in 1913 and has a history of more than 100 years. It covers an area of more than 4,000 square meters and has 96 rooms, so a building is a small society.
Walking through the cobblestone path by the stream, the gate of Zhenfu Lou is facing the south stream, with the mountains at its back, an ideal feng shui treasure, and there are large rice fields by the stream and the mountains are clear.
The owner of Zhenfu House is called Su Zhentai, who lives in a clay building. At the beginning, he was engaged in the tobacco business, which is one of the traditional specialties of Yongding, and later, when he became rich, he returned to his hometown and built this earth building.
Not too far from Zhenfu Building there is a high observation deck with about hundreds of round and square earthen buildings distributed along the South Stream, which is where Yongding’s earthen buildings are more concentrated.
The round tulou is beautiful in appearance and large in size, but more of them are square tulou. The structure of Zhenfulou is divided into two rings inside and outside, with the outer ring having three floors and built according to the traditional eight-trigram pattern.
The rooms of the Tulou are built one after another, all of them are wooden structures, which are not convenient for young people to live in nowadays, and the original design of the Tulou no longer exists for defense reasons, so only a few old people live in the Tulou today, and most of the rooms are empty.
Tulou is the jewel of Fujian’s residential buildings, where dozens of families and hundreds of people go to one building, reflecting the family tradition of Hakka people living together in clans and harmony.
Several of the earlier developed Tulou are already very commercialized, with stalls selling small goods and local specialties everywhere, and many tourists, but Princess Tulou is still considered a relatively quiet one, and outside the Tulou is a tranquil rural landscape.
