The Han Chinese People: The Hakkas

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Introduction The Hakkas are Han Chinese people with origins related to Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhejiang, Hainan and Guizhou. The Hakkas originated from the lands bordering the Yellow River (today, the Chinese provinces of Shanxi, Henan, and Hubei). During the years of the Northern Song dynasty and the following Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279), the attacks by Jin people forced many people to move to the south. They mostly moved to Tingzhou, an area in southwest Fujian, forming the Hakka group. The Hakka people achieved some notable advances, particularly in developing cultural activities to enrich their communal life. Due to their agrarian lifestyle, Hakka have a unique architecture …show more content…

In terms of building style, Fujian Tulou can be divided into circular, square and mansion-style ones. The square ones have various types, such as palace style. In terms of the construction structure, Fujian Tulou has two main designs, one with corridors and the other with separate units: -The Tulou with corridors connecting the rooms on each floor. A household owns a room (equal to a bay in space) vertically on each floor. There are public staircases for accessing them. An ancestral hall is built in the centre of the courtyard, which may also serve as a study room. -The Tulou building with separate units is divided equally into units with one household owning one or various units. Each unit has its own entrance, inner courtyard and staircases connecting rooms on different …show more content…

The first floor has 53 bays and each of the upper storeys has 56 bays. The wall around the first floor is 1.6 meters thick without original stone-laid base. People of later generations built one meter high wainscots for the wall with pebble stones to protect it from eavesdropping. When constructing this Tulou, only one staircase was set. Rooms on the first floor are used as kitchens, on the 2nd floor used as barns and above the 3rd floor used as living rooms. Rooms on the first floor and the 2nd floor do not have any window. When the Tulou was repaired in 1744, its structure was slightly modified. The first floor still kept its inner-corridor type without any change while the upper floors were changed into the type of separate units. Each unit was provided with a narrower staircase. Nine overhanging lookouts were installed in the 4th

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