Crane Lake Village

About the village

Luoruihe (罗瑞合), also known as Crane Lake Village, is a village in Nanlian, Longgang, in the east of Shenzhen. Its landmark, and the reason it is known outside China, is the walled Hakka house at its centre: 鹤湖新居, Crane Lake New Residence. The house was begun by 罗瑞凤 (Luo Ruifeng), who left 兴宁墩上围 in Xingning in 1758 and settled here with his family. Three generations built it, and the main structure was completed in 1817. Everything sits inside a single walled rectangle: 179 dwellings and more than 300 rooms arranged as 九厅十八井, nine halls and eighteen courtyards, with the clan's ancestral hall at the centre and a semicircular pond in front, covering around 25,000 square metres in all. Its survival is unusual. Most houses of this kind stand in open country, while this one is now enclosed by the apartment blocks of Longgang. Since 1996 it has been the Shenzhen Longgang Hakka Folk Custom Museum (深圳龙岗客家民俗博物馆), listed as a provincial heritage site in 2002 and as a national third-grade museum in 2020. The ancestral hall inside the walls, restored in 2010, holds the 大夫第 plaque conferred on the family in 1834. The village takes its name from the 罗 family's 瑞合 trading house, and the museum's own address still reads 龙岗街道南联社区罗瑞合. One of the largest surviving Hakka 围屋 in the country stands here, in a village that the 罗 family has been leaving and returning to for two and a half centuries.