My Changsha Hosts

Our next trip was to Changsha in Hunan Province . Very Hot! But it was great spending time with Cynthia’s parents asnd seeing Cynthia’s new flat.

Cynthia’s father is Dean of the English Department at a university in Changsha. He and his wife graciously let me stay in their home and fed me great spicy meals. I have no statistics but by my observation, most Chinese families living in a city, will live in flats. Sort of like our version of a condo. They own the flat/apartment but not the land. Cynthia’s parents flat was on the 4th floor (really 5th) had 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, living rm, dining rm, and kitchen. Their building complex was built by their university, so it houses mostly university workers. It had a play area and a guard and gate around the whole complex. I think it is common for companies to build apartment complexes for their workers to buy. It appears that most of the residents living in city apartment complexes contain very job/class homogeneous grouping. Again I have no hard facts -just observations. I haven’t seen any suburbs or neighborhoods yet. There are single family homes in the country but they are usually 4 or 5 stories tall with 3 to 4 generations living in them.

Caesars Palace Casino in Las Vegas??

Nope! This is a 5 star hotel in Quanzhou for less than $70 a night. CNN International and softer beds than normal. Quanzhou is a fairly old harbor city. Couple of good temples and pretty good shopping. Restaurants were hard to find (but they did have the ever present McDonald’s & KFC) Good place to pamper ourselves after our Tulou adventure. One of the days we rode a bus to a walled in stone city. There are many quarries around the area so their main building material is stone. It was on the coast so nice cool breezes when you got out of the walled-in area.

Funky Construction

This 1330 built tulou was originally made like this. Supposedly the builders were not given enough tasty food so they made the 5 story supports slanted like this on purpose (some as much as 15 degrees off). It is still standing but it looks really strange. Another unique feature is that each kitchen has its own well with drinkable water. In most Tulous the well was a community one located in the center of the circle.

Our Closet in the Tulou

Our Bedroom in the Tulou

Our Tulou Hotel

Staying in a Tulou -what an once-in-a-lifetime experience. 2 nights plus 3 tulou-cooked meals for 2 people only cost a total of 30 dollars. The room had 2 beds, bedding, a small TV and a light. Everything else ‘you bring your own’ (towels, washcloths, toothbrush etc.) We shared a small “squatty potty” public bathroom with the rest of the floor but there were very few guests there those 2 nights. We had fresh vegetables and a freshly slaughtered chicken for dinner, rice porridge for breakfast and another similar meal the next night.

Above - is our morning view

Tulou Living

Most Tulou have 3 to 5 stories. Bottom level kitchen, 2nd level for storage and 3rd and above for living. Our bedroom was on the 4th floor – no elevator. Since so many of the young are leaving for the big cities most of the tulous have a lot of vacant rooms. Generally it is the responsibility of the eldest son to take care of the tutou. In the ones we toured we saw mostly grandparents and the pre-school aged children living there. (Remember the grandparents take care of the young while the parents work in the city). When tulou clan living was common there could be as many as 300-600 people living in one. One of the larger tulous had 288 rooms. I asked if the children have their own rooms and was told that when the child was old enough (4 or 5) the boy child would move into the bedroom with his grandfather.

The one pictured above is one of the larger ones with 4 additional inner rings and 4 stories. We had a great tour guide who was head of the clan that told us about his tulou and its history.