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Photo Credit: Arthur Wei
TRADITIONAL CULTURE

China’s Forgotten Tulou Buildings and Their Last Residents

Life in Guangdong’s ancient, neglected, and crumbling “Earth Buildings”

On a sunny afternoon, 83-year-old Huang Jichang takes out a worn slip of paper from his room, points to a paragraph and, without removing the cheap cigarette he’s smoking from his mouth, reads it to me: “Xinyunlou was built in the year of Jiachen, in the period of Emperor Yongzheng, Qing dynasty.”

Huang Jichang with his slip of paper that claims his home was built in the early 18th century, tulou architecture

Huang Jichang with his slip of paper that claims his home was built in the early 18th century

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