Fujian Tulou: choose your cluster and plan the journey

Plan a Fujian Tulou trip around a named cluster, not a booking labelled only “the tulou”. Tianluokeng is the famous five-building group on a hillside, Yunshuiyao is a village route with Hegui and Huaiyuan, and Hongkeng and Gaobei are two separate groups in Yongding. A day trip and an overnight stay can both work.

Choose the buildings before choosing a tour

The prices come from the Fujian provincial price notices of September 2020. A combined Hongkeng and Gaobei ticket costs CNY 98 and is valid for two days.^[2]

Use the Chinese names when you talk to a driver or operator. Here Nanjing means 南靖 in Fujian, not 南京, the big city elsewhere in China. When you book, ask for the cluster, the meeting point and the return destination in writing.

What the World Heritage designation covers

The UNESCO property, inscribed in 2008, comprises 46 buildings rather than every tulou in Fujian.^[3][4] Each is a several-storey earthen house, round or square, with a central open courtyard, and some held up to 800 people. The windows to the outside start above the first floor, and each floor gave a family two or three rooms. The buildings sit in the fields and forest according to Feng Shui principles.^[3]

Many tulou are still homes. Stay on the open visitor route, ask before you photograph residents, and leave closed stairs and private rooms alone.

Tianluokeng: three round, one oval and one square

Tianluokeng lies in Shangban village in Shuyang town. Its five buildings are three round ones, an oval one and a square one. The square Buyun building (步云楼) stands in the middle and the other four surround it. The group was built to follow the order of the five elements, and the Fujian heritage bureau counts it as a model of Hakka tulou clusters.^[5]

The viewing platforms above and below the group show the pattern best. The route also includes Yuchang (裕昌楼), the leaning building, and Taxia village.^[1]

Yunshuiyao, Hongkeng and Gaobei

Yunshuiyao is built around Hegui (和贵楼), Huaiyuan (怀远楼) and the old trail, with Guangju, Cuimei and Jinshi buildings along the route.^[1] In Yongding, Hongkeng and Gaobei are separate ticketed groups, and Chengqi (承启楼) belongs to Gaobei.^[2] Pick the architecture and the amount of walking you like, and spend time in one courtyard rather than hurrying through a checklist of names.

Getting there

From Xiamen, compare a dated tour, a private transfer and public transport, and check that each one ends at the cluster you want and brings you back. In 2019 the province launched a direct sightseeing coach from Xiamen’s Zengcuoan cultural centre to the Nanjing tulou, a three-hour journey that ran daily at launch.^[6]

For a tour, ask about the pickup time, the named stops, the guiding language and the return point. For a private car, agree whether the quote is per vehicle or per person and whether waiting time is included.

Day trip or overnight stay

A day trip suits one defined route. Stay overnight if you want two clusters or a slower pace. Nanjing welcomed more than 10 million visitors in 2025, and the village of Guanyang alone has about 120 homestays and farm restaurants, more than 90% of them run by local villagers.^[4] Before you pay, check the exact address of a homestay, because a room may be inside a tulou or in a house nearby.

For the wider itinerary, use the China travel overview.