The Datian Earthen Fortresses, featuring Anliang Fortress

Anliang Fortress is located in Datian County, Sanming City, Fujian Province. It was built in the 15th year of the Jiaqing era of the Qing Dynasty (1810) and took 5 years to complete. The fortress spans 40 meters from north to south and 35 meters from east to west, covering an area of nearly 1500 square meters. The entire fortress is built along the mountain terrain, with a lower front and a higher back; it has 48 rooms built along its walls, and the height difference of up to 14 meters gives Anliang Fortress a staggered and increasingly imposing appearance. It is now the seventh batch of national key cultural relics protection units. Anliang Fortress is a typical defensive earthen fortress built against the mountain, in an irregular semicircular shape. On the left and right sides of the main gate, there are 15 wooden corridor houses with Xieshan-style roofs, which overlap like fish scales from top to bottom, used for storing grain in peacetime and as 'refuges' in wartime. The horse-walking corridor on the wall is one of the typical features of the earthen fortress, and almost all fortresses have such corridors (which are actually not wide, barely enough for walking, let alone running horses!), allowing free movement along the fortress walls. The structure of being lower in the front and higher in the back makes the fortress three-dimensional, facilitating observation and defense, with shooting holes arranged around the walls to fend off enemies from all sides without leaving any blind spots. The Datian Earthen Fortresses originated in the Song and Yuan dynasties and flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Different from the earthen buildings in Western and Southern Fujian, the Weiwu in Southern Jiangxi, the Weilong houses and Diaolou in Guangdong, they are a type of rural architecture with a primary focus on military defense and a secondary focus on residential function. Less than a hundred of these fortresses remain today, among which the most representative ones include Anliang Fortress in Dongban Village, Taoyuan Town, Fanglian Fortress in Xusikeng Village, Junxi Town, Taian Fortress and Guangchongtang in Xiaohua Village, Taihua Town, and Pipa Fortress in Chengjiang, Jianguo Village, Jianshe Town. During the holiday, I spent two days visiting the above five fortresses. The distances between each fortress are not short, and they are located in the countryside, so it's more convenient to travel by car. As national key cultural relics protection units, they are indeed very representative, and each fortress has a unique architectural style! Personally, I think Anliang Fortress is the most beautiful one. Now inside the Dongban Ancient Village Scenic Area, the ticket price is 98 yuan, and there is a discount to 60 yuan in the off-season of winter , plus a shuttle bus for 15 yuan . After traveling so far, I gritted my teeth and decided to go in for a look, but to be honest, it's really not cost-effective... Nearby, there is also a thousand-year-old Taxus chinensis worth seeing (picture 20).