This southern Chinese traditional house form is a circular protected village encompassed by a rammed earth wall normally 2, 3 or 4 storeys high with many families; in fact, the whole village living within. At some sites, these Hakka’s are in groups suggesting that, as the village population grows, new Hakka’s are built.
Being fundamentally built from rammed earth, weathering, particularly from wind driven rain can be a huge problem. Hence, the rammed earch wall is protected by a very large overhang of 4 or 5 metres.
The subdivision of the inhabited wall is uniform suggesting there is no hierarchy within the village social structure.