Fujian Tulou: Zhenchenglou

'That's a grandmother banyan,' says my guide Yue'er, pointing at an ancient-looking tree across the road. We have just emerged from sampling some rice wine at a local brewery, and I wonder if the booze has gone to her head. 'Grandfather banyans have a beard,' she sniggers, making a gesture which I hope is intended to refer to adventitious roots.

I have come to rural southern China to explore the tulou: these vast, rammed earth structures that dot the Fujian countryside. The tulou provided accommodation for several generations of a family, but also served a defensive purpose: in lawless times, when armed bandits prowled the hilly countryside, they were a walled fastness with a food store and a water supply. The Zhenchenglou (pictured above), which we visited earlier in the afternoon, is perhaps a good example of tulou architecture: its stout, four-storey defensive wall encircling a communal courtyard with an ancestral hall. Looking up as you step across the threshold, your gaze alights on a host of wooden doors, behind each of which would once have been a dwelling for a separate household: with 44 rooms and two halls on each of the upper two floors, there can't have been much space or privacy. (The lower two floors were used for storage.) Brick partition walls divide the entire structure into eighths, based on the bagua principles of Taoist cosmology: fengshui is important here – although that didn't prevent part of the tulou from burning down.

That evening, I spend the night at the Changdi Inn in the Fuyulou – a rather handsome old house named (in typical Oriental fashion) for 'abundant prosperity'. Built by three brothers, the story goes that the youngest lived in the middle, flanked and protected by the elder two. The owner, a Mr Lin (who also went by the name of Stephen), gave me a quick tour of the premises before dinner. As we paused by a courtyard, he mentioned that they used to bury the afterbirth in the house, to root the children there. These were clearly not a people who wandered far; or perhaps they did, hence the maternal urge to seek to keep them near – I couldn't quite tell. The building hasn't been comprehensively modernised: there is electricity and running water, but the plumbing leaves something to be desired. Still, I am not displeased with the antique four poster bed in my room, although the mattress is a little threadbare and the window is covered by a mesh screen to keep the mosquitoes out, obstructing the view.