THE ‘HAKKA TULOU’ AND EARLY HAKKA SETTLEMENTS WITH NO

TULOU BUILDINGS

Although people might be impressed by the high incidence of huge castle-like tulou in the traditional

in the southern part of Fujian. According to the Ming dynasty writer Ma Huan’s book entitled Yingya Shenglan (The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shires), Malacca was the place where the Eunuch set up a base and transshipment station to serve Chinese merchant ships. In this book he wrote, ‘After the Ming dynasty royal fleet had arrived in the port, the sailors began

to construct a city whose walls were built by erecting wooden

stakes [beams are horizontal and in the roof]. There was one drum tower at each gate. Sailors, holding a ring tightly in their hand, patrolled at night to guard the city. A small warehouse was constructed inside the city, to house food, money and supplies. In early summer each year, having moored their ships in this port, Chinese sailors had to wait until the middle of the fifth month for the south wind to go back home. The king of Malacca enjoyed buying wares from sailors and merchants. The local royal court sometimes sent envoys, who traveled to China on Chinese royal ships to pay tribute at the Ming Dynasty royal court.’ The palisaded city was indeed constructed under the leadership of the famous Eunuch Zheng He in 1403, i.e., the third year of the Yongle reign. Later, the city gradually waned and fell into ruin. To commemorate Zheng’s achievements, Chinese settlers there finally transformed the site into a public cemetery for the local Chinese. (Kong 2000)

A PLACE OF PLACELESSNESS

Hakka territories, the idea of the ‘Hakka tulou’ (that is, the association of the tulou solely with Hakka people) is actually a cultural ‘invention’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983) dating from the 1950s (Liu, 1956). Despite the fact that, in his investigation report Huang (1988) has already argued a very strong case that the Minnan people also built a large number of examples of tulou-likearchitecture, he has failed to dispel the notion of the ‘Hakka tulou’. In terms of sheer numbers of publications, essays about ‘Hakka

tulou’ have increased dramatically since the mid- 2000s.8 _{Unquestionably, this expansion can be traced}

to some of the local Hakka officials and residents who have propagated the ‘Hakka tulou’ legend in a calculated attempt to attract more tourists and to try to monopolize the reputation of the great tulou

heritage. In a 1990s tourist pamphlet, local residents of Yongding county formally proposed the hypothesis that the tulou buildings had originated in the North and, when they came South, the Hakka people either brought the idea of tulou architecture with them or invented it themselves. This publication immediately stirred up disputes about tulou origins and the debate that has lasted several decades is still ongoing. Taking up the gauntlet for the South, Zeng (2006) believes that the round tulou architecture originated in Zhangzhou, traditionally the territory of Minnan people. Adopting a slightly different tack, Wu (2002) postulates that tulou architecture first emerged in

northeastern Guangdong province, namely, the Raoping rural area. Since the early 2000s, these have been the three major hypotheses that have dominated the discussion about the origin of tulou architecture.

From the standpoint of constructivism, it is easy to conjecture that the first hypothesis – that published by Yongding county – is a reflection of the Hakka genesis narrative that developed during the early Republican period in the 1920s, a critical stage in the formation of Hakka group identity (Tagami, 2013). The theoretical basis of this hypothesis is the five- stage Hakka Exodus story proposed by Luo (1933). Taking up cudgels for a southern development, Zeng’s hypothesis implies an indigenous Minnan origin, in such coastal areas as Zhangpu and Pinghe in which there have been concentrations of Minnan

8. http://epub.cnki.net/kns/brief/default_result.aspx

people long before the advent of the Hakka people. Wu’s hypothesis embraces a northeastern Guangdong origin, as he argues (2006) that the two round buildings he saw in Raoping rural area can be dated even to AD 1402 and 1413, and hence are both earlier than Zeng’s observations in southern Fujian. These three competing theories proposed to explain the origin of tulou architecture reflect the quite different

orientations on the three different sides toward the origins of the tulou heritage. One point left unsaid in Wu’s hypothesis is that northeastern Guangdong province is believed by many to have been the center of the Hakka population, and therefore this area also shores up the reputation of the Hakka as the inventors of these huge edifices. Similar ideas can also be observed in the first two hypotheses. Echoing what has happened in the Hakka identity creation process since the 1920s, in the past two decades or so the Hakka people living in southwestern Fujian and northeastern Guangdong, in collaboration with Hakka scholars and officials, have fabricated the idea that the tulou heritage that is the exclusive property of the Hakka.

The preface to this dissertation has already briefly touched upon the rise of not only tulou buildings but also other earthen defense systems in the sixteenth- century Fujian region. It could be speculated that, in a later period, the construction of the tulou buildings in this border area provided an opportunity to improve Hakka-Minnan acculturation. However, in any discussion about these earthen buildings the folk divide should not be overstated. Both the Hakka and Minnan people built their own fortresses, each applying the same in-depth knowledge of earth ramming and wood construction techniques. Looking for reasons these buildings were needed, Xie (2007) has pointed out that not only the conflicts between the local residents and pirates could have stimulated the erection of tulou buildings in this area, but also the endemic contentions between the Hakka and Minnan folk groups should not be overlooked when seeking for an explanation. That said, we cannot rule out the possibility that the Hakka might have learned about tulou construction techniques from the local Minnan residents in the course of their conflicts. Tagami (2013) has stated that intermarriage between the Hakka and the local Minnan people

continued for a very long time; but, in the Hakka identity creation process of the Republican era, the contributions made by the indigenous maternal side were usually stifled. In fact, the more the Hakka blended themselves into the local social groups in biological terms, the more they wanted to expunge local elements from their cultural expressions. In the process, any idiosyncratic characteristics that would have served to differentiate themselves from the local people might have been overstated by the Hakka themselves. However, the Hakka could not erase the identical features exhibited in the eye- catching tulou architecture on both sides, so they simply made it ‘their own’. Further investigation will very likely show that these fortresses were not built until the middle period of the Ming dynasty. Prior to this date, the sedentary valley societies of the two folk groups, the Minnan and Hakka, might have both pursued similar architectural styles and shared similar settlement arrangements. In other words, the consensus would seem to be that the Hakka had no idea of the concept of tulou architecture when they arrived in the area. This leaves us in the position that we cannot even say that the tulou is definitely a

Hakka building style. The early settlement period of the Hekeng people lasted some fifty to seventy years, from the late-fifteenth century to the mid-sixteenth century. It is known that, during this period, the early Hakka settlers in Hekeng did not build one single tulou building; in other words Hekeng was not originally a tulou village.

1.3 LIMITATIONS TO TULOU SITE