Long-distance travel, accommodation in different places, home is the first problem to be solved. Only when you have a home can you survive and develop. The war left an indelible shadow on the ancestors of Hakkas, and Hakkas scattered in the mountains began to gather and built single huts into multi-storey buildings. Using local materials, a tall and thick wall is rammed with local soil to form a relatively closed living space, which outsiders can't easily enter, and at the same time, it can unite the strength of the whole building to resist the invading enemy. There is a couplet in the famous arcade of Yongding City: "A scholar has few relatives and friends. Why should we be separated from you? " Living in the * * * building, it is best to meet each other in and out. "Tulou is not only a shelter for Hakkas, but also a spiritual home to which they are deeply attached.
Yongding Hakka earth building originated in the Tang Dynasty, and was gradually accepted and spread by various places in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty.
According to records, in the 14th year of Chenghua in Ming Dynasty (1478), Yongding was officially established as a county, and the Hakka people in the county "rose from the humanities and were initially divided into the top of several counties". Since the late Ming Dynasty, the Hakka people in Yongding have been actively engaged in tobacco production and trade, and their financial resources are rolling in. These outstanding cultural and economic achievements have become the spiritual and material basis for the prosperity of Hakka earth buildings in Yongding.
Hakka people abide by the cultural traditions before moving south, especially follow Confucianism, worship ancestors, cherish family unity, attach importance to patriotism and geomantic omen, and form a unique Hakka culture. Hakka tulou is the most distinctive manifestation of Hakka culture, and it also reflects the original appearance of Han culture in Jin, Tang and Central Plains. The formula of earth used for exterior wall of earth building is complex and elegant. First of all, its main building material must be fine red soil without impurities, and then mixed with fine river sand, paddy field bottom mud and old wall mud in a certain proportion. After fully stirring, add water and turn it over repeatedly with a hoe for fermentation. This process is very important for the construction of earth building, and the full fermentation of mixed mud will directly affect the service life of earth building after its completion. If the soil outside the earth building is improperly fermented, the wall will crack when the temperature and humidity change, threatening the safety of the residents inside the earth building.
This proportion of soil is called concrete, but it is not the final building soil. It must be added with good brown sugar, broken foaming egg white and glutinous rice soup without rice grains. When tamping the earth wall, some sawdust, bamboo chips or large stones should be added to the soil to strengthen the earth wall. The external wall of this rammed earth building is not afraid of floods and is rock solid. In the era when there was no reinforced concrete, the clever Hakkas built a mysterious and huge earth building in this seemingly primitive way, creating a miracle in the history of architecture. Hakka Tulou is characterized by a circle of five-story buildings surrounding a huge square or round house. There is a central courtyard inside the house, and the ancestral temple is generally located on the central axis opposite the main entrance of the house. Or build bungalows in the courtyard to form the second circle, or even the third, fourth and fifth circles. The ancestral hall is located in the center of the inner circle of the core, offering sacrifices to ancestors and holding family gifts. The outer earth wall is very thick, often reaching more than 2 meters. The first and second floors are kitchens and barns, which are not open to the public or have only small perforations. Only people who live above the third floor can open windows and shoot, which is very defensive.
There are three typical Hakka earth buildings: Wufeng Building, Square Building and Yuan House. Its architectural features have three points:
1. The central axis is clear. Generally speaking, the main hall, the main building and the gate are all built on the central axis, and ancillary buildings such as horizontal houses are distributed on the left and right sides, and the overall symmetry on both sides is extremely strict.
2. Take the hall as the core. Highlight the position of the main hall, plan the courtyard with the hall as the center, and then combine the earth building into a whole with the courtyard as the center.
This corridor runs through the whole building. However, there are few isolated earth buildings like Qing Ji Building in Yongding and even Hakka areas.
Wufenglou
Wufeng Building is the lower hall, nave and the main building (upper hall) from front to back along the central axis of the whole house, which are collectively called the three halls. The lower hall is the lobby, and nave is the family gathering hall, both of which are single floors; The main building is mostly three, four and five floors, with the ancestral hall in the middle of the ground floor for ancestral tablets and the bedrooms on the left, right and upper floors. The three halls are separated by patios, with compartments on the left and right, and passages leading to the horizontal houses. A horizontal house refers to a strip-shaped long house parallel to the central axis, which is also a room. The number of floors increases from front to back and finally approaches the height of the main building. Taking the main building as the center of gravity, the two horizontal buildings are like the wings of a big bird, and the momentum stretches like a phoenix spreading its wings, so it is called "Wufeng Building".
Wufeng Pagoda is located at the foot of the mountain, which is low in front and high in the back. The roof is mostly mountain-leaning, with gentle slope and straight eaves, which obviously retains more Han and Tang styles.
Fanglou
Among Fujian earth buildings, square buildings are more popular than round villages. The square building is characterized by a circle of square tall walls rammed, leaving only one entrance and one hall. The room is set along the wall, with an open patio in the center and cloisters around the patio, which overlap each other and reach five or six floors. This kind of earth building gives full play to the traditional rammed earth technology. The same form, big and small, with different levels, is very strong. The modeling features of the square building are similar to those of Wufeng Building, but the outer walls of the lower hall and the horizontal house are thicker and higher, forming a more spectacular whole.
Yuanzhai
Yuanzhai is the most attractive of the three typical plastic arts. From the architectural analysis, the lighting and ventilation of the round building are relatively general; Save building materials and have small wind resistance; Because the force is uniform, the earthquake resistance is also the strongest. Square buildings appeared earlier than circular buildings. From square buildings to circular buildings, defense requirements are the most important factor. Compared with square buildings, circular buildings have seven advantages:
1. The square building's four-corner room is not popular because of its dark light and poor ventilation, and it is close to the wooden stairs, so the noise interference is great, while the round building excludes the corner room.
2. Compared with square buildings, there is no obvious difference in the orientation of rooms in circular buildings, which is beneficial to the distribution within the family.
3. The area of a circle with the same circumference is 1.273 times that of a square, so building a circular building can get more inner courtyard space than a building.
4. The outer arc of the fan-shaped room in circular building is longer than the earth wall, and the inner arc is shorter than the wood structure, which saves more materials than the square building.
5. The wooden components of circular buildings are of the same size.
6. Feng Shui believes that the round building can be controlled. The scientific explanation is that circular buildings have less resistance to cold air than square buildings, so the influence of evil spirits on rooms is relatively small.
7. From the seismic point of view, the circular building can transmit the horizontal seismic force more evenly, so the model house has stronger seismic performance.
This circular building is generally composed of two or three circles, nested from the inside out. The outer ring is more than ten meters high, with four floors and one or two hundred rooms. The first floor is a kitchen and dining room, the second floor is a warehouse, and the third and fourth floors are bedrooms. There are thirty or fifty rooms on the second floor, which are generally guest rooms. One of them is the ancestral hall, which is a public place for hundreds of people living in the building to get married, mourn, celebrate and celebrate. There are also wells, bathrooms, mills and other facilities in the building. The earth building is rammed with local raw soil, without reinforced concrete. The width of the wall foundation is 3m, the thickness of the bottom wall is1.5m, which gradually decreases upwards, and the thickness of the top wall is not less than 0.9m.. Then it is divided into many rooms with wooden boards along the circular outer wall, and there is a corridor inside.
On the whole, Wufeng Tower, centered on the three halls, contains obvious inferiority complex. To be sure, it is the continuation and development of the ancient courtyard layout in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, the birthplace of Chinese culture. In its group combination, only the upper hall (main hall) at the end of the central axis adopts a heavy rammed earth bearing wall. The layout of the square building is similar to that of Wufeng Building, but its thick earth wall extends from the upper room to the whole periphery. Obviously, its defense has been greatly strengthened. As far as the name is concerned, Yuancun shows two characteristics. On the one hand, in the circular building, the three halls have been hidden, and the priority of respect has been seriously weakened; On the other hand, Zhai is a fortress, and its defense function rises to the first place, becoming an extremely effective paramilitary project.