Tujia Stilted-House Building Technique

The Tujia stilted-house building craft arose in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods and flourished under the Tang and Song, called by scholars a "living fossil" of Chu architecture; it entered the third national ICH list in 2011 (code Ⅷ-211), jointly registered by Hubei, Hunan and Chongqing, with the western-Hunan corner-houses filed by Hunan Province.

The building follows the hillside: the main hall stands on solid ground while the side rooms cantilever out on three sides over timber posts, the upper level dry and aired for living, the lower for livestock or storage, all joined by mortise-and-tenon without a single nail; the craftsman sets out by the lie of the land, raises posts and ridgebeam in the principle of harmony between house and mountain, and the stilted houses of Huilongge along the Tuojiang are its model.

The Tujia stilted house is an outstanding example of the stilted granary architecture of China's southern mountains, condensing the Tujia wisdom of working with nature and local materials; the continuous stilted-house rows along the Tuojiang in Fenghuang have become the town's most recognisable cultural landscape.