The provincial government of Fujian is to apply to have the best of the province's earth buildings (tulou in Chinese) placed on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Cultural Heritage List.

During a recent interview with Beijing Evening News, Luo Zhewen, a noted researcher on China's ancient architecture with the State Bureau of Cultural Relics and vice-president of the China Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, expressed strong confidence in the application.

He said that the distinctiveness of tulou is being recognized more and more widely. Researchers from home and abroad who have visited the site agree that the buildings are of precious cultural value.

Scattered over a remote mountainous area, most of the earth buildings are well-preserved and the area in which they are located has been little spoiled by ugly newly-completed concrete buildings.

"During my visits to the area with a large concentration of earth buildings, I even found slogans painted on the walls by the Red Army in the 1930s," Luo said.

But there is no shortcut to becoming a World Cultural Heritage Site, he said.

"First, we must decide on an official name for them," he said. "Whether to call them the Fujian Earth Buildings, the Hakka Buildings or something else, has not yet been decided."

There are thousands of earth buildings scattered around western Fujian Province. The government must decide which buildings should be added to the heritage list, Luo said.

(China Daily 03/15/2001)