I think it's been 9-10 years since I last went (old post is here, and here - Chinese works) ), and I had a weekend free, so I decided to visit the tulous in Fujian again.
This is going to be a bit of a comparison post.
Transport - generally much easier, with the high speed rail now going to Nanjing (Fujian), it's within reach of a long weekend from Hong Kong. On the negative side, high speed train stations are not built in convenient places - Nanjing seems to be in the middle of nowhere. I arrived around 8pm Friday night, and once outside the station, you are plunged into darkness. No public transport at that hour, but a shared taxi into town cost 10 rmb a person. Trying to get back to the railway station during daytime using a public bus from Nanjing also resulted in failure - even though the timetable says buses run every 20 minutes or so.
After staying the night in Nanjing I caught a number 6 bus to the Tourist Service Center after Shuyang Town (10 rmb). I should have got off at Shuyang Town. The Tourist Service Centre is a big complex with lots of tour buses, quite a few guides, but not many customers. They are good at taking your money (100 rmb to see Tiantuokeng group and a few others) and then making you wait for a bus to start.
Compared to 9-10 years ago, when we arrived in Hukeng village, and then hired a motorbike to take us around a for the day, find us somewhere to stay, and then to a bus station the next day, this is to some extent more organised. On the minus side, you are governed by the bus schedule, you have a tour guide in the bus using a very loud, loud speaker, and the bus follows a set route.
Accommodation
After a very good experience staying at a YH in Xingping, I decided to give the YH in Taxia Village a try. Plus side - the prices are reasonable, the owners are friendly (not much English spoken though), and the place is clean. Minus - bathrooms are really tiny, and not much in the way of extra information about things to do in the area. Last time I stayed in a tulou, and I'd still recommend that if possible - although most of the options I saw this time were tulous which had been wholly converted into hotels. Prices had not seemed to have changed much in the 10 years - I paid 80 rmb for a room with shared facilities 10 years ago, and 150 this time for a room with a private bathroom. Hotels were around the same price.
Food
There seemed to be more restaurants (and perhaps better dishes) around this time - I expect down to the increase in the number of tourists. Prices were reasonable - around 25-40 rmb a dish in a small restaurant in Taxia village. On the other hand, when I stayed in the tulou, having home cooked freshly slaughtered chicken was a great experience.
General experience
If you have never seen the tulous, I strongly recommend going to see them. However, once you have seen a few, unless you are really interested in the architecture and culture, then they do all start to look the same. Also, with all the ones I saw on this visit, people were only allowed in the courtyard. When I went 9-10 years ago, I think we were allowed upstairs in some, and staying in one also allowed this opportunity.
If you are on a tour bus, then there will always be a group of tourists with you when you are visiting a tulou. Along with everyone selling tea and various tourist trinkets, this will take away from the experience. So, organising private transport in order to get to some less visited places might be a good idea.
Taxia Village is quite a pleasant place to stay. While I did not visit the place the last time I was here (so I cannot compare), I can see that there has been quite a lot of 'beautification' work going on - new walkways along the river banks and suchlike.
More Organised / Controlled
Perhaps this is a separate thread, but I was thinking about how China is more organised, or perhaps more controlled than 10 years ago. If you spoke no Chinese, and you were willing to persevere a little (even with Chinese, I need some perseverance!) I think you probably could get to most of the main tulous using the public transport tour buses laid on by the Tourist Center. This would not have been possible 10 years ago - you needed some Chinese to be able to talk to the taxi driver / motorbike taxi / tulou owner, so that you could get around, find a place to sleep and eat something. This has the effect of herding most tourists along set routes, all seeing the same sights and visiting the same attractions, and this probably takes away from the experience.