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田螺坑土楼群

五更寮, People's Republic of China

田螺坑土楼群

Tianluokeng tulou cluster is one of the better known groups of Fujian tulou. It is located in the village of Tianluokeng (lit. 'snail pit') in the town of Shuyang, Nanjing County, southern Fujian province. The cluster consists of a square earth building at the center of a quincunx, surrounded by fou

r round earth buildings (or more exactly, 3 round earth buildings and one oval shape earth building), figuratively nicknamed "four dishes one soup". A tulou (lit. "earth building") is a unique architecture found only in the mountainous areas bordering Fujian and Guangdong in southern China. The "earth building" is an enclosed building, usually square or circular in shape, with a very thick earth wall (up to 6 feet thick) and wooden skeletons, from three to five stories high, housing up to 80 families. These earth buildings have only one entrance, guarded by 4–5-inch-thick (100–130 mm) wooden doors re-enforced with an outer shell of iron plate. The top level of these earth building have gun holes for defense against bandits. In spite of the earth wall, some of them are more than 700 years old, surviving through centuries of exposure to the natural elements, including earthquakes. There are...

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