Xiamen and travelling to the nearby Tulous
- meganagathe
- 19 nov. 2017
- 2 min de lecture
We arrived early in Xiamen after having spent a sleepless night in Changsha airport, but hey it was a good way of saving money! In Xiamen we stayed with our first couchsurfing host, a really nice New-Zealander teaching English in China. Even though we were pretty wrecked we still wanted to visit a bit of Xiamen. The city itself is incredibly modern and filled with skyscrapers. Whilst there, we decided to take a ferry to the small island of Gulang yu. The island is quite strange as it resembles more something you would expect to find in Europe than in China. Our highlight there was being able to taste lots of delicious teas and pastries!
The next morning, we were off again to our next adventure: finding the Tulous (big mud houses) classified as world heritage sites and nestled into Fujian’s country side. It wasn’t looking promising as in Xiamen we already had to take 3 taxis, as every time we arrived at a bus station we were sent somewhere else! It then took us 3 buses before finally making it to the famous Tulous!! One thing can be said about China: there is no such thing as getting from point A to point B easily, one always has to go through C,D,E first! However, it was worth it - the particular cluster of Tulous we went to were surrounded by beautiful rolling hills, with luxuriant vegetation, fruit trees and vegetable patches. That night we stayed with an incredibly nice family living in one of the close quartered Tulous. A Tulou is a circular building with kitchens on the ground level and bedrooms on the next two floors. There is a real community feel to the place with neighbours walking around to each other’s kitchens and picking up something to munch on, or having cups of tea.
Our dinner there was also quite an experience, with the father of the family killing and plucking a chicken right in front of us and then cooking it into 2 dishes: a delicious chicken and vegetable dish and a chicken soup, it was probably one of the freshest chickens we have ever ate! After dinner we hung out with the daughter of the family and another guest over tea. Properly made tea in China, looks like an art, the person serving tea is constantly making it as you are drinking it and only serving it in ‘shot like’ portions. The next morning, we visited nearby villages before making our way back to Xiamen.
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