Fuzhou

 

March 19, 2026

We are spending the week on the Hwa Nan Women's College campus in Fuzhou. This is our third trip to this campus, so it is nice to come back to a familiar area. However, China changes so quickly! We think we know our way around except all the buildings we are looking at are new since our last trip! One exception to this is the building behind us. This building is the location for the original Hwa Nan Women's College established by Lydia Trimble in 1908. We are staying on the college's second (new) campus and are being hosted by Lydia' great-grand nephew. And we are getting grand treatment!

Here we are on the steps of Trimble Hall with Gordon and Sonia Trimble. There is also a Trimble Hall on the campus of the University of Puget Sound, so our students feel at home!

We had a fancy welcome dinner with present and past leaders of the college. They fed us all sorts of local delicacies including abalone!

We explored some of the Ming and Qing Dynasty residential homes of Fuzhou. This home had an opera stage within it's walls. The stage is on the left above the fish pond. It was built in the 19th century.

The homes are built with apertures in mind. All the rooms flow from one to another and the windows and doors are intricately carved. 

This famous heart-shaped tree is a classic Fuzhou photo opportunity.

We took a day trip up into the mountains to explore some of the tulou built by the Hakka. The tulou are essentially castle-like structures built by the Hakka ethnic group. We visited two homes. The first one is just a museum operated by a family. The second one we visited was square-shaped and some family members still lived on the upper floors. They were built between the 12th -19th centuries. They could hold up to 800 people and they were self-sufficient since they stored food and had wells and family shrines inside. They were between 3-5 stories tall and each individual family would occupy a vertical section of the building.

The ground floor of this tulou was a tourist market. There were plenty of tourists! We were the only foreign tourists. If you watched the live-action version of Mulan, it was filmed in a tulou.

This is a square-shaped tulou and was built over 300 years ago. Our guide told us that the round tulous were stronger than the square or rectangle varieties.

Inside the square tulou, you can see that it is lived in because there is laundry hanging on the upper floors.

Karl giving an impromptu class lecture.

We had a cultural activity with our students and some local Hwa Nan students today. We learned how to do some calligraphy. Our students got to dress up in the traditional clothes of various eras. The students behind us also dressed up. They used make-up and pinned up their hair. I don't have those pictures yet, but they were transformed!

We learned how to hand-dip fans into paint to give them a pretty textured background. Karl is trying his out.

His finished product looks nice!

We admired some of the art made by the students. This painting was made using egg shells. It is a Fujian province traditional technique.