Meizhou and the Hakka Roundhouses of Guangdong

The Hakka Heartland

The Hakka are a Chinese people who migrated south over centuries, and Meizhou, in eastern Guangdong, is the place most associated with them: a basin of villages and old towns where the architecture, the food and the family rituals are still visibly Hakka. The signature building is the walled communal house — a fortified compound built around one or more courtyards, housing an extended clan, and defensible in an era when settlers and locals clashed.

Reading a Hakka House

The forms vary: the "surrounding dragon" house curves an arc of rooms behind the main hall, the round and square walled compounds enclose a courtyard behind thick earthen walls, and the largest examples have a central ancestral hall on the axis of the whole plan. Look for the ritual core — the hall where the lineage keeps its tablets — and the defensive features: thick walls, high windows, and one or two heavily built gates.

Old Towns and Ancestral Halls

Meizhou's old quarters are the other half of the visit: a compact grid of lanes with arcaded shop fronts, ancestral halls that survive as community buildings, and a museum or two explaining the migration history. Several of the more famous walled houses are within an hour of the city, which makes a two-day stay enough to see both the architecture and the daily life that continues around it.

Eating Hakka

Hakka cooking is robust and based on preserved flavours: salt-baked chicken, stuffed tofu, braised pork with preserved vegetables, rice wine chicken and an abundance of rice and taro dishes. Meizhou is a good place to eat it properly, and meals in the villages around the walled houses are part of the experience rather than a break from it.

Practical Notes

Meizhou has its own high-speed rail station, with services to Guangzhou, Shenzhen and the coastal cities, which makes it reachable in a day from the delta. Spring and autumn are the comfortable seasons; the villages are quiet in the week and busy at festival times. Two days is the right length: one for the old town, one for the outlying walled houses and a village meal.

Frequently Asked Questions