Hakka Houses in Longgang: Hehu

November 7, 2004

Hehu (Crane Lake) was the first Hakka house we visited. As described in the book Hakka Enclosed Houses:

Located at Luoruihe village in Longgang town and built in 1817, Crane Lake New Dwelling is the ancestral house of the Luos which occupies an area of 2.5 hectares in Longgang. The structure is comprised of "three central structures and two horizontal houses" which are separated by walls. Inside the walls are found houses, halls, rooms and wells which are scattered evenly apart and well preserved. Crane Lake New Dwelling is the largest Hakka dwelling building in our country [?] and is now the primary focus for the protection of cultural relics in Shenzhen.

(I am not sure whether by "country" they mean China, the province of Guangdong, the city of Shenzhen, or the district of Longgang.)

The pamphlet from the site gives its dimensions as:

165.9 meters (about 539 feet) across the front

111.6 meters (about 341 feet) across the rear (a trapezoid, not square)

104 meters (about 338 feet) deep (front-to-rear distance)

14,432 square meters (about 1366 square feet) in area

This same pamphlet states that the village contains more than 300 rooms.

Another homepage explains, "once the last residents had moved out, it became deserted. In 1996, the government of Longgang Town decided to turn it into a museum dedicated to the Hakka folk customs." The fact that Hehu is now a museum had plusses and minuses: although it was "dead" (other than for some staff in residence), we could poke into the rooms at will--something we couldn't do at Dawan Dwelling later that same day.

Float your cursor over these pictures for a description; click on them to see larger versions.

The Main Gate