Guanxi Hakka Walled Houses 关西围屋

About Guanxi Hakka Walled Houses

A weiwu is a Hakka clan compound in which rooms, halls and ancestral shrine are enclosed inside a defensive outer wall. Longnan counts 376 of them, more than seventy per cent of all surviving examples in southern Jiangxi, and the city is officially styled the home of the weiwu. Guanxi Xinwei, in Guanxi Village of Guanxi Town, was begun in 1798 and finished in 1827, spanning the Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns of the Qing. It covers roughly 7,800 square metres, and the Longnan government describes it as the largest, best preserved and most functionally complete Hakka dwelling of its kind in southern Jiangxi.

The catalogue name is a collective one. Moving through the Tianxin area of the same township a visitor passes Guanxi Xinwei together with Xichang Wei, Penggao Wei, Zhenxia Wei and the Dashufang study hall, so the entry describes a cluster rather than a single house. Longnan has repaired Guanxi Xinwei among other weiwu and added fire and security systems; across the city 150 million yuan has gone into conserving 92 of these buildings. The Guanxi group was named in the eleventh batch of China Overseas Chinese International Cultural Exchange Bases.

What to look for

• Guanxi Xinwei itself, the rectangular Qing compound completed in 1827 that gives the group its name
• The other buildings of the cluster in the Tianxin area of Guanxi Town: Xichang Wei, Penggao Wei, Zhenxia Wei and the Dashufang study hall
• The defensive logic shared by these compounds, in which living quarters and halls are wrapped inside a continuous outer wall
• Repair work carried out on the compound, including the fire and security installations Longnan has added to its weiwu

Location & getting there

Getting to Guanxi Hakka Walled Houses

Check which interiors and courtyards are accessible. Active places of worship and protected monuments may have different visitor rules.

• Search for 关西围屋 with 赣州市 and 龙南市.