Coral Wall - Walking into An Ping Town

In the beginning when the immigrants moved into Tainan, the solid and free housing material they could have was "corals", a lot of them were free to take near the coastal area.

The earlier immigrants used the coral and the clay to build up the walls for their shelter, like the left picture shown.  Now, just few of this kind of old wall can been seen in An Ping town. 

Coral Wall is the very common construction in the ancient age when Han race landed in Taiwan.  However, after the family economic was improved, the house was remodeled with the bricks.  At this age the other common symbol on the top of the wall is the "Horseback" architecture as the following right picture.

This kind of the wall is for the ordinary people, and it was said the host will shape the house top by 5 different options on the red circled location according to their family character.

*Remark:  Five different options is based on Five Elements (Metal, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth) - a kind of Fong Shui knowledge, shown at the bottom of the picture. (Five house top pictures are referred to the blog of "gogohsu.") 

For those rich and governmental officer families, now most for the temples, the house top is "Swallow Tail" shape, which will be introduced later.