Tian Luo Keng tulou group

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Tian Luo Keng Earth Building group (田螺坑土楼群) is one of the better known Hakka earth building group, it consists of a square earth building at the center of a quincunx, surrounded by four round earth buildings (or more exactly, 3 round earth buildings and one oval shape earth building), figuratively nickenamed "四菜一汤,Si cai yi tang" (four dishes with a soup).The Tian Luo Keng Earth Building group is located at Fujian province, Nanjing county,Shuyang township, Tian Luo Keng village (literally "Snail Pit" village) in southern China, about four hours drive by motor coach or taxi from Xiamen, through winding and pumpy narrow mountain roads.

An "earth building" is a unique architecture found only in the mountainous areas bordering Fujian and Guangdong in southern China. The "Earth building" is an enclosed buildings, usually square or circular in shape, with a very thick earth wall (up to 6 feet thick) and wooden skeletons, from three to five storeys high, housing up to 80 families. These earth buildings have only one entrance, guarded by 4-5 inch thick wooden doors re-enforced with an outer shell of iron plate. The top level of these earth building have gun holes for defence against bandits. What is amazing about these earth buildings is the fact that in spite of the earth wall, some of them are more than 700 years old, surviving thru centuries of natural elements, including earth quakes, yet still standing magnificiently solid. There are more than 35,000 earth buildings to be found in southern China.

In the 50s, US spy satellites picked up the images of earth buildings in southern China, which led the US intelligence to believe that China was in the process of massive buildup of nuclear reactors!^{[citation needed]}

Some of the more important earth buildings such as the ones at the Snail Pit village shown in this picture, is in the process of applying for status of World Heritage Site.^[1]

The five earth buildings at the Snail Pit village are:

• The square earth building named Buyun building(Reaching the Cloud building) at the center of the quincunx. It was the first earth building at this site, built in 1796. It is three storeys high, each storey has 26 rooms, four sets of stairs, and a circular corridor in front of the rooms. The Buyun building was burnt down by bandits in 1936, and rebuilt in1953 according to the original shape.
• The Hechang building, a three storey high round earth building,
• Zhenchang building, three storey, round shape, 26 rooms per storey, built in 1930
• Ruiyun building, built in 1936,
• The last Wenchang building of 1966, 3 storeys, 32 rooms per storey.

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Coordinates: 24°26′N, 116°45′E