Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang and Huaiyuan Lou

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang

   In the green hills of Anxi county, inland from the port city of Quanzhou in Fujian, the Xiacaopu site preserves the remains of an iron industry that flourished during the Song and Yuan dynasties, roughly from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries. Archaeologists found furnaces, slag heaps, ore-roasting pits and workshops on a hillside, evidence of large-scale production. The iron produced here was shipped down the rivers to Quanzhou and exported to Southeast Asia and beyond, and that is why the site is part of the World Heritage listing of Quanzhou, Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China, inscribed in 2021. At that time, Quanzhou was one of the largest ports in the world, visited by Arab, Persian and Indian merchants, and described by Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta.

   Read the complete Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang is where the day begins. Next is Fujian Tulou.

2. 2. Fujian Tulou

   Picture a giant ring of rammed earth, three or four storeys high, with almost no windows on the outside and a single heavy gate. Inside, galleries of wooden rooms face a courtyard with an ancestral hall at its heart, and up to several hundred members of one extended family once lived within those walls. That is a tulou, and the hills of south-western Fujian are dotted with them, round and square, some centuries old, many still inhabited.

   Read the complete Fujian Tulou write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Fujian Tulou comes up about 56 km into the recorded legs. Next is Huaiyuan Lou.

3. 3. Huaiyuan Lou

   Huaiyuan Lou is a tulou in Nanjing County, the name meaning something like a house that cherishes distant things, and it sits in a valley of tea terraces and bamboo in the same group of earthen buildings as its better-known neighbours. The lou form, a tall rectangular or square block of several storeys, differs from the round tulou, and the dwellings of this type are often built on a regular grid with the main hall facing south, as the principles of fengshui required. The orientation, the position of the gate and the placement of the well and the ancestral hall were all weighed by a geomancer before the first wall was raised.

   Read the complete Huaiyuan Lou write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 200 km into the recorded legs you reach Huaiyuan Lou. Next is back through Fujian Tulou.

4. 4. back through Fujian Tulou

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Fujian Tulou write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Fujian Tulou, late in the day. Next is Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang.

5. 5. Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang. That is the ride.