Dadi lies farther east and north than most of the tulou villages, in Hua'an County, where the hills are steeper and the valley floors are smaller, and its cluster has a rather different look from its neighbours. Instead of one grand circle, Dadi has a group of buildings in different shapes, round, square and oval, set in a narrow valley beside a stream. The houses date mostly from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, and the Hakka families who built them came here from further north, bringing their language and customs, and the buildings kept the clan together in an area that was often troubled by bandits and feuds.
The houses are made in the usual way, with rammed earth walls thickened toward the base and a roof of fired clay tiles, wide eaves to throw off the rain, and an inner courtyard that held a well, a small shrine and often a few pigs and chickens. What makes this cluster notable is the variety, and the way the buildings have been fitted into the slope, each with its own gate and a stone-paved path. Some have beautiful carved doorways and painted beams, while others are plain, and in places walls have been patched with newer earth where rain had eroded them. The listing of the Fujian tulou as a World Heritage site recognised that this way of building is both a work of engineering and a social idea.
The countryside is damp and green, with terraced paddy fields, tea bushes and tall bamboo, and in the early morning the valleys fill with mist. The roads that serve it are narrow, with tight bends and short steep climbs, and often shared with trucks hauling timber, farm vehicles and groups of cyclists. Surface quality varies greatly, and rain can create slippery patches of mud and leaves. The summer is hot and humid, and the best months to visit are October to April.
Foreigners should check the rules before planning to ride, since a Chinese licence and registration are normally required for riding a motorcycle, and many visitors travel by car with a driver. Local tea, grown on the hillsides, is the natural thing to taste on a visit.