Hsieh Ying-chun points out that building a weilung wu, a compound that expands outward in layers of buildings from a central courtyard, took the kind of manpower which only very large families had available. As most of the first Hakka settlers on Taiwan did not arrive as whole families, but were rather groups of individuals working cooperatively, weilung wu were not very common.
建築師謝英俊指出，蓋圍龍屋要相當龐大的人力，必須大家族才有能力，而早期客家先民移墾來台時，多半不是整個家族遷移，而是許多單身者共同合作，少有大家族，大型的圍龍屋也就不多見了。