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Earth Buildings Apply for World Heritage List
The State Bureau of Cultural Relics has applied to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to place earth buildings, ("tulou" in Chinese) in east China's Fujian Province, on the World Cultural Heritage List.
According to Saturday's "China Daily", the UN experts will make an appraisal in the spring of next year and will make their decision in June 2003.
Scattered over a remote mountainous area, most of the 20,000 earth buildings are well-preserved. These huge buildings, which resemble fortresses and area usually as high as five-storey buildings, are called earth buildings because of their height and their strong, outer shell which is made up of earth.
Regarded by architects as the cream of Chinese traditional residential architecture, "tulou" first appeared about 1,200 years ago, and were mostly completed in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.
They were built and inhabited by the Hakka people -- a group belonging to the Han family -- who can trace their ancestors back more than 1,500 years to central and north China.
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