Taxia

Sourced from Wikivoyage. Text is available under the CC-by-SA 3.0 license.

Vmenkov

Taxia (塔下村) is a small village in Nanjing County and is nearby Tianluokeng Tulou Cluster (田螺坑土楼群). Nanjing County is on the western edge of Fujian Province, west of Zhangzhou and south of Longyan, near the border with Guangdong Province. Most visitors come here to see the Fujian Tulou, literally "earth buildings" but also translated as "roundhouses"; these are on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Understand

Taxia is part of the Route A of the Tianluokeng Tulou Cluster park. The entrance fee of ¥100 for adults (students ¥50) includes the village Taxia, the Tianluokeng Tulou Cluster and Yuanglou Tulou.

Get in

From Xiamen Fanghu Long Distance Bus Station there are frequent buses to Nanjiang.
From Nanjiang bus number 6 (¥10) brings you to the Park entrance.
From there you can take a "Park bus" to Taxia or directly to the Tianluokeng Tulou Cluster (¥15).

Get around

Taxia is small so you can just walk around.
To visit the Yuanglou Tulou (3 km) and the Tianluokeng Tulou Cluster (7 km) from Taxia you can walk, hitch-hike or take the park bus. Notice that the park bus service is rare when it is not weekend or public holidays, so are the options for hitch-hikes.
From Taxia to Yuanglou Tulou there is a nice walking trail on the left side of the river. From Yuanglou Tulou to Tianluokeng Tulou Cluster you have to follow the road uphill for 4 km.

See

Taxia VillageIt is small village with some Toulus with a river in its centre. Between the banks of the river there are 11 stone arch bridges in different styles neighbouring a couple of toulus. apart from its natural beauty, Taxia is also famous for its ancestral temple of the Zhang clan with 24 symbolic stone flagpoles.
Tianloukeng Tulou ClusterThe Cluster consists four rotundas and one square tulou in the center. It is an arrangement that presents the Five elements (Metal, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth) in Chines philosophy. It is the simpyl the most famoust of the Tulous in Yongding County.
YuchanglouBuilt in 1308 it is the oldest Toulu in Fujian Province. This 18.2-m+high building is an outcome of the shareholding system in the early times by the Lio, Luo, Zhang, Tang and Fan clans. They shared 250 rooms in 5 floors. There are 22 wells in each ground floor kitchen which surpass any other toulu in Fujian for the number. A ancestral hall is in the center of the round Toulu.

Do

In addition to visiting the main attractions, you can go for a walk in the surrounding area.
There is one nice walk (1½ hour) up to the mountain just above Taxia. The track starts left of the ancestral Temple of Taxia and goes up the mountain through the fields. At the top off the mountain, turn left and follow the path. At the fork, turn left and go downhill. The road will bring you back to the main road just a few hundred meters from the parking lots at the village entry.

Eat and drink

There are some restaurants at the river front serving the tourists.

Sleep

There are plenty of possibility to stay in Taxia.
You can sleep in a renovated Toulu (¥180), in the international Youth Hostel (¥100 for a room) or in one off the numerous guesthouses (just chinese sights) in the village.
The Youth hostel is a bit hard to find, but they have a small and fancy cafe/restaurant at the river front. Just look for the flag of the International Hostel Association.