Kaiping Diaolou and Villages

UNESCO World Heritage Site (2007) · Kaiping, Guangdong

Hundreds of fortified tower houses rising above the rice fields and bamboo groves of Kaiping, in the Pearl River Delta west of Guangzhou - a unique landscape built mostly in the 1900s to 1930s with money sent home by emigrants who had left to work in North America, Southeast Asia and Australia. More than 1,800 diaolou survive. Their owners fused traditional Chinese villages with whatever they had seen abroad: Greek columns, Roman domes, Gothic arches, Baroque balconies and Islamic arches sit atop thick concrete towers with iron shutters and gun holes, built to protect families and savings from bandits and floods. In 2007 four village groups became a UNESCO World Heritage site: Zili Village with its tall family towers reflected in ponds; Majianglong, hidden in bamboo; Jinjiangli, with the nine-storey Ruishi Lou; and Sanmenli, home to one of the oldest towers. Nearby, the Li Garden, built by an emigrant who worked in America, mixes a Chinese garden with Western villas. The towers served as the backdrop to Jiang Wen's film Let the Bullets Fly, and the arcaded riverside streets of Chikan old town are close by.

Zili Village, Tangkou Town, Kaiping, Jiangmen, Kaiping, Guangdong, China

Main sites roughly 8:30-17:30 daily; villages accessible in daylight. Hours vary slightly between sites.

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