Fujian county and Xiamen -Easter trip

Easter holiday

Xiamen and Fujian county are in Southern China - on the Chinese mainland just opposite Taiwan island. We (being Claudia and me) spent four days there over the Easter weekend.

The trip was not planned to be an Easter trip (also given the fact that Chinese do not celebrate Easter), but I just still had two leave days from last year which I hadn't used before and my company's rules say I have to use them until the end of March. If that's not a good reason to be on the road again :-)!

Xiamen is a 2.5 hour trip from Beijing by plane and it takes much longer by train, that's why we obviously chose to go by plane.

When we arrived at Beijing airport, a surprise awaited us. Due to the fact that earlier in the week some Chinese seperationalists had tried to flyjack a plane, security measures had been increased significantly. Instead of the usual ten minutes needed to go through security check, it took us over an hour. But luckily we had arrived at the airport early, so we made it on time for departure

Hakka /tulou

From the airport our private driver drove us to tulou villages. The road was getting ever narrower and ever bumpier- we first passed Xiamen industrial area (wood production etc), then banana palm trees (I've never seen that many banana palm trees in one place before in my life), hills, a mountain river, rice paddy fields. The landscape was impressive!

After 3.5 hours we arrived in Hongkeng, where the Chinese minority /nationality of the Hakka / Tulou live. The village was a real farmers village and had some unique atmosphere to it:

farmers working on the rice paddies cultivating rice, hens and roosters walking around freely, old inhabitants sitting under the old village tree playing games, school children walking home from their afternoon class, a woman praying with red candlesticks to a tree -live is simple there, but for a visitor coming from a big city like Beijing with poluted air it's a nice experience.

The Hakka are known for their 'tu lou', their Earthern buildings which have the following characteristics:

- three to six floors high

- round or square

- built from earth, sand and wood (to stabilise the building)

- with an inner courtyard

- on the lower floors there is only one big door and no windows. This is because in this remote mountainary area there used to live many thieves and robbers who used to attack the farmers. In order to protect themselves they build those big earthern buildings with only one entrance on the lower floors.

Tulous are usually inhabited by more than hundred people, each one of the inhabitants having a small room only, the kitchen being in the inner courtyard and the shared toilets with basic shower facility outside the tulou.
Overnight we staid in one of the tulous, very basic accomodation, but our hosts were most accomodating. Apart from us mainly Chinese visitors staid in the hostel. As evening program a firework and campfire were organised. When the Chinese started to dance a group dance around the campfire (tip left, tip right, jump forward, backward, then thrice forward), I joined! What a fun!

More tulous

After a good night's sleep we visited even more tulous of different kinds. A waterbuffalo greeted on us walking around in the beautiful scenery and many old tulou people whispered "hen gao" "zhen gao" (very tall!) when they saw me because people in Fuijan province tend to be shorter than in Beijing and also because there were not many other foreign visitors.

On the way back to Xiamen the driver obviously wanted to achieve a new world record for the fastest driving, but luckily he managed his metier...

Xiamen

In Xiamen we staid in Xiamen International Youth Hostel in the university district. Many young people around there!

Xiamen was visited by foreigners early in its history. Portuguese, British, French and Dutch - they all tried to establish Xiamen as their trade port early in Xiamen history. Not all of them succeeded. Due to its colonial history Xiamen offers an interesting mixture of Western and Chinese elements.

Gu Lang Yu is a small island with mediterrean houses, small alleys and charm. It is said to have the highest piano density of China. We went there by ferry, but by mistake we didn't get on the direct ferry, but on a ferry first shipping around the whole island before reaching the destiny. Sometimes mistakes have nice consequences: Thus we were able to gain an overview over the island first.

On the island we strolled around the little alleys with 'dried things shops' (yes, thing is the most appropriate word as they offered anything dried from dried fruits, fried seahorses to something I don't even know what is was. Yes, they eat allthe dried things...), we climed the highest mountain of the island (93 m high :-), went by cable car to the second hightes hill (at least over sea level), walked along the beach and tested the water temperature (original plan:with our hands only, but one of us tested it with shoes and socks as well by accident:-).

Back in the old town of Xiamen we found an Esprit shop which changed our sightseeing trip into a sightseeing & shopping trip.

On the last day we found out how difficult it is to find proper breakfast on a Monday morning at 9:30 am in the university district. Maybe just to early for usual university students! A stroll around the sea alameda, enjoying the sun (I'm even slightly red today), visiting Nanputuo Si (a temple with a vegetarian restaurants for the monks and guests like us), eating ice cream ( 0,20 EUR each!!!)- and then it was already time to go to the airport to fly back to Beijing.

Easter and 'in the cold again'

I hope you have spent happy Easter! In Xiamen we had a little Easter egg search thanks to Claudia. Apart from a chocolate egg, I now have 'eggy' as my new companion :-).

Heating season in Beijing which is established by law lasted until the 15th March. There is a Beijing saying that just after heating season has ended, it's getting colder again. I can definitely confirm that! Brrrrrhhhh!