Kaiping Diaolou and Villages

A typical structure of the landscape in the Kaiping county of Jiangmen district in Guangdong, China, is the famous multi-storey fortified towers called Diaolou, the Kaiping Towers. These areas include four distinct Kaiping village areas: Sanmenli, Zilicun, Jinjiangli, and Majianglong village cluster. These areas display a unique combination of Western and 19th-century Chinese architectural styles. Their function was clearly military, but they were also made with remarkable artistic taste, making them one of the area's great tourist attractions today.

Kaiping Guangdong

The Kaiping Towers

Kaiping Diaolou structures were constructed from the Ming Dynasty's time to the early 20th century. They reached their peak during the Warlord Era, which saw well over three thousand of them. Today, there are approximately 1,800 Diaolou remaining in Kaiping's rural countryside, with 500 more in Taishan and other parts of Guangdong, such as Shenzhen and Dongguan.

Kaiping's oldest standing Diaolou is Yinglong Lou, located in Sanmenli (Chikan Township), which was built by the Guan family during the Jiajing era (1522-1566). It was a three-storey rectangular fortress of approximately three stories with walls one metre thick, and it was very different from the tall tower Diaolou constructed four centuries later. Yinglong Lou is 11.4m high and was rebuilt in 1919. The most spectacular is part of the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Fortress Tower Kaiping

If the Kaiping Towers are so beautiful, it is because they were not just defence towers but rather fortified houses. They were built by Chinese who had emigrated to America and returned to their rich country to build large houses that had to be well protected against frequent attacks by bandits and looters. The money from the Chinese overseas has transformed the landscape of Kaiping's rural areas over the past 30 years.

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the new government put an end to banditry. With this change, the role of Diaolou disappeared, and in the 1980s, after the reopening of China, many villagers moved. Now, most of the Diaolou are empty, although they are still considered by the overseas Chinese as their spiritual home, from which they return for great celebrations or to perform rituals linked to the memory of the ancestors. Some of them still have original furniture and accessories inside.

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