Seaweed-House Building Craft

The seaweed house is the most representative ecological dwelling of the Jiaodong Peninsula coast, most densely clustered in the fishing villages of Rongcheng, with the core home of Dongchudao village in Ningjin Subdistrict founded in the Ming Wanli era. The houses use stone for walls and eelgrass (seaweed) for the roof, the roof heaped to a thick soft ridge and praised as a "living specimen of ecological dwelling." In 2006 the Rongcheng seaweed-house building craft was listed in the first Shandong provincial intangible heritage list, and in 2007 Dongchudao village was named a third-batch China Historic and Cultural Village.

Building a seaweed house runs through more than seventy steps, all by hand, hinging on two systems—stone-and-brick walling and seaweed-roof thatching: layers of seaweed are laid and lapped tight, the ridge raised high to shed rain and resist fire, walls built of rough stone at the base and finer stone above, the thick walls and steep roof keeping the house warm in winter, cool in summer and proof against wind and rot, distilling the fisherfolk's building wisdom of living with the sea.

The seaweed house is a singular sample of Jiaodong coastal culture and of China's maritime vernacular architecture, carrying the building wisdom of fishers in harmony with nature, with outstanding value for the study of coastal settlement, ecological architecture and intangible heritage.

The most complete surviving seaweed houses cluster at Dongchudao village in Rongcheng, open to visitors.