Room and board (and cooking class!) review at Changdi Inn, Yongding Tulou (永定土楼洪坑村常棣客栈)

Changdi Inn (常棣客栈) is a family-run hostel/inn located in a square (specifically, “Five Phoenix” style) tulou, in the delightful Hongkeng tulou cluster (洪坑土楼), within the Yongding (永定) area. I highly recommend it!

Location

First, living inside of a tulou is just a cool experience. You’re living in the kind of structure you’re here to visit! This tulou is called Fuyu building (福裕楼). Stephen, or 阿文, is the innkeeper, and the right part of the tulou is his family’s home. That’s where the inn is.

The building is situated along a river, with the mini tulou across the way. Unlike Taxia village 塔下村, there aren’t cars running alongside this part of the river, so it’s very tranquil.

Directly across you can catch people farming on the banks of the river!

Here’s the entrance to the communal courtyard of the tulou.

Here’s a view of one of the interior courtyards.

The Room

There are rooms both with shared bathroom, and private bathroom. I booked a room with private bathroom.

Since tulou aren’t known for having windows, it was nice that my room did have a window. The bathroom is in that wooden structure in the corner! And Stephen was very proud to point out that the thing within the frame behind the bed wasn’t a painting, but rather a cutout in the drywall to show the old stone wall behind it.

Here’s the bathroom! Yes, it’s a wet room with the shower, toilet, and sink all together. But there’s plenty of space, with just enough little shelves to put things on. And something that even the Park Hyatt Guangzhou (where I would stay at the end of the week) didn’t have: plentiful hooks and towel racks to hang wet towels!

Also a nice feature that should be mentioned: there was an individual router in my room, which provided really fast internet. Very impressive.

Outside of the room was a little common area with seating, table, and more natural light.

People

Stephen was a fantastic innkeeper, and he made the stay great. I remember making the booking on Trip.com one day after midnight, and Stephen called right away the following morning to find out about my arrival details, etc. We added each other on WeChat which made communication easier (I wasn’t too awake when he called!).

Importantly, he helped set me up with his brother, who took me from Longyan train station to the inn, drove me around all day the next day, and then drove me to my next destination Meizhou the third day. This was an extra charge, of course, but the cost was very reasonable. We also discussed my itinerary of which tulou clusters to visit and when, together. He actually proposed one that was very close to the one I had researched independently, so one can definitely lean on him to suggest itineraries.

The day of arrival, he introduced me to some of his teas, while giving me the history of the building and explaining a walking route around the village.

The day before I left, he asked me if I needed to take a PCR test, and made sure his brother took me there after checking out, and before getting on the highway to Meizhou. So thoughtful, and necessary in this day and age. I really appreciate that he could think ahead and look after the entire guest’s experience, beyond just the overnight stay itself. Here’s the line to the PCR test, free, just outside of the village.

Food

When I asked where to eat in the village, Stephen said, just eat here. I didn’t mind it for the convenience, and nice atmosphere. Meals were served in the first courtyard upon entering the wing with the inn.

The first night, I had this chicken soup, “Herbal (milk root) chicken soup (土鸡草药（牛奶根）汤).” With half of a free-range chicken, this was 80 RMB. It had a very light flavor, and I drank the whole tureen of soup (good for hydration!).

Stephen also recommended the stir-fried sweet potato leaves (炒地瓜叶), because he said they grew them themselves (20 RMB).

He also treated me to a cup of their rice wine (米酒), which was sweet, because it’s made from glutinous rice he said.

While dinners are an extra charge, breakfasts were included in the room. Breakfast was served buffet-style, and was pretty simple. Here was congee (粥) with some toppings.

There were also steamed buns and breads of different kinds, and also hard-boiled eggs and glutinous rice sticks. These weren’t homemade, but rather steamed from frozen. No shade in that - the Shangri-La Xiamen breakfast also served frozen food too!

The first morning I tried this brown sugar bun, which was fine.

There was also a brown sugar and date cake, and I had egg and congee. The shaomai wasn’t fully heated, so I skipped that. There was also decent coffee.

I also had a slice of very purple steamed bread.

Breakfast was set out kind of late (for Chinese standards), around 8am. My first morning, I was already up, as was a family from Luoyang. Stephen said they were up early, but they said their baby was already up by 6am!

Breakfast was decent, but not something to linger over or get up early for, so the second morning I just went straight for a few things that would give me sustenance until lunch time.

Special cooking class

When I was doing research for my itinerary, I came across a Shanghai-based tour company called M2Adventures. I saw that they also had a tour of the Fujian tulou arriving on the same day as me. They spent a bit longer around the tulou than I wanted to, so I didn’t sign up for their tour, but I did like one of their activities, a cooking experience. They didn’t say where they were staying, but did say it was a “square tulou.” I wondered if it would be the same Changdi Inn?

When I checked into the inn, I asked Stephen if there were any cultural experiences like cooking experiences around the village. He did say that the next day, he would have a cooking experience with a tour group coming in, and he invited me to be a part of it. They were going to make taro buns (yuzibao 芋子包). I think this was the M2Adventures activity!

So the next day, I made sure I made it back to the tulou in time for this activity. Actually, at my last stop, Chuxi tulou cluster, I saw some of the tour group there! So I knew I wouldn’t be late, because I left a bit before they did.

So after I got back to the tulou and dropped off my stuff in my room, I joined the yuzibao making class. The people from M2Adventures were very welcoming, and helped make me feel not awkward for crashing their activity. They gave me a very positive impression.

At first, there were only the lady teaching us, and two from their tour group (one of whom was I think the tour leader).

The first step was to peel the taro. These were small ones, and were cooked in a pressure cooker. The peel just slid right off of the meat, which was a bit slimy.

Then we mashed the taro with a pestle (we all took turns doing this).

And then the lady mixed in tapioca starch (mushu fen 木薯粉).

Then she had one girl do all the kneading. The girl said she broke out into a sweat! In front is the stuffing. Usually there’s pork in it, but the group had some vegetarians, so I believe they replaced the pork with carrot. Besides carrot, there was also mushroom and dried bamboo.

To make the buns, we took a small ball of dough. The dough was very very soft, and not at all sticky, at this point.

Then, make a kind of well.

Fill the well in with stuffing.

And then pinch the edges closed. The teacher kind of made a pointy end with the side that was closed.

These were then steamed, and then dressed with some oil, scallion, and white pepper (and soy sauce?).

The taro and tapioca starch made for a chewy exterior. They were very good! The filling they prepared in advance was also very tasty.

This second night, the rest of my dinner included this boiled duck (白切鸭) which Stephen recommended. It was fine. (80 RMB)

I asked for a tofu dish, and he recommended his version of Hakka tofu (客家豆腐). I showed him the picture of the Hakka tofu I had had for lunch; he said this was completely different! Well, it did have celery, and the sauce was darker and thinner, but… Anyway, it was tasty. The menu said this dish was 28 RMB, but I think Stephen only charged me 100 RMB for this meal. 100 RMB is probably high for this area, but in line with what I might expect for a restaurant inside of an inn.

Again, Stephen treated me to a nice little cup of rice wine (米酒).

Extras

Thinking back to my stay at Changdi Inn, I just feel a sense of warmth. Stephen was such a great host, and I liked his brother taking me around in his car; he’d know where to take the good pictures. The brother usually works in a bank, not in the inn; he was pitching in on his holiday!

On October 1, some other guests of the inn bought fireworks to celebrate the national holiday.

After 7:30pm, they have LEDs light up different parts of the village in colors, and then they also have this abstract story of the Hakka people projection-mapped onto a spray of water in the middle of the river.

I just really liked staying in the village, which gave those extra moments like in the morning time or in the evenings, when a lot of the tourists weren’t around. Moments like in the communal courtyard, where I could observe this old lady drying her rice, and she asked me if i was staying in the inn.