The Watchtowers of Kaiping
The Kaiping Diaolou are a cluster of stone watchtowers located in Kaiping, in the Guangdong province of China, built in the 1920s and earlier. These watchtowers are fascinating because they are a mix of eastern and western architectural influences. You can see how pillars and domes are built atop the towers instead of traditional Chinese style roofs found during the time. Because of this, the entire area around Kaiping has been designated a UNESCO heritage site in 2007.
How do these towers come about? Apparently, in the early part of the 20th century, emigrants from China worked elsewhere in the world: in North America, Canada, around South east Asia (Malaysia), and when they returned home, they build these towers with features from buildings found from those places. So you get influences from baroque architecture, with inlets, domes, and plenty of lines and curves running around the towers. Actually I half expected to see one of those stone gargoyles perched atop these towers.
What are these towers for? Banditry was a problem back then, even way before the 1920s when most of the towers were built. So villagers, in an effort to combat the banditry, built these defense towers out of solid concrete, with grills on windows and big iron doors. In the event of a bandit attack, they would leave their homes and gather inside these towers. With some as high as seven storeys, the lower floors are for defense and the upper floors are living quarters. On the open roofs, turrets jut out from the four corners, where snipers can take aim at the bandits below.
Interestingly, the name Diaolou itself originated from two words, Lou which is tower, and Diao which means to toss. The story was that a wife tossed herself off one of these towers instead of giving away the location of her husband and child.
There are a few clusters of diaolou in the surrounding area of around Kaiping city. The tourism brochure I had lists five convenient clusters for tourists to visit. Li Yuan Garden has two diaolou within its premises. The garden, built by a returning Chinese American, Xie Wei Li combines Chinese traditional gardening, Southern China water-town style landscaping and Western architecture.
The second cluster is the Zili village cluster, totaling 9 diaolou, built in the 1920s by prosperous emigrants returning from Chicago and Malaysia. They are located overlooking paddy fields and several western style villas. The third cluster is the MaJianlong villages, five villages where emigrants returned from places such as the U.S., Mexico, Canada and Australia. The fourth cluster is Chikan town, which evolved from an ancient town established during the Qing dynasty to a bustling area when the local wealthy Chinese returned and set up their businesses and raised buildings with the Western architectural styles they saw. Lastly, there’s also the JinJiang village cluster, whose family members returned home from US and Canada.
KW and I visited the first 3 sites, our tight schedule not allowing us to do more before dusk. OK. Getting there. Here’s how we did it. This is Day 1 of 3. We took the midnight flight on Jetstar Asia out of Singapore and landed in Macau International Airport at 2am. Since the border crossing into China opened only at 7am, we had 5 hours to try and catch some sleep at the airport. The public buses in Macau were easy enough to tackle, signs were informative and we were at the border control building soon enough. It was a bit of a sightseeing bus ride, since we passed by the centre, and the ubiquitous casinos found all around Macau.
Border Control. Macau borders Zhuhai, China. The border crossing is painless, but the amount of human traffic that goes through is tremendous. My first step into China proper, the immediate area is Zhuhai city, full of commuters who cross the border daily to work. We look for the long distance bus station, fail badly and ended up taking one of the tourist coaches to Kaiping. Zhuhai, the city, is one of the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) where the primary business is trade. And it shows, tall condominiums sprout everywhere on the outskirts of the city, and more are in construction.
We reached Kaiping city around noon, and had some Iranian la mian, or at least that’s what the signage says. The roadside joint was run by a Muslim Chinese family. Mummy cooks in the back, while daddy clears table and maintains order. Son makes the hand-made noodles while daughter serves. The place is pretty popular too, with a constant stream of customers. Me, I’m just happy to get warm food into my insides. The weather here is too cold, plus I never learn my lesson. I keep bringing too few warm clothing.
So we parked ourselves at a hotel before flagging one of the local tuktuks type of taxis to bring us around. I was expecting to be quoted stupid prices, so it was a pleasant surprise that the entire trip, including waiting time amounted to only 120 RMB for the two of us. So we headed towards the Diaolou clusters, a 150 RMB ticket per person covers all five clusters.
Local tourists are aplenty around the Diaolou clusters. Foreigners? Yes, but not many. Asians non-China tourists? Just the two of us. I seriously need to brush up on my vocab if I’m going to be traveling around China alone next time. The Diaolou themselves are fascinating structures, some of the interior are well preserved, and climbing up to the top, you can see a great view of the countryside.
At night, we were back in Kaiping city for dinner and a rest. It’s Day 1 of a three day blitz and the lack of sleep at the airport this morning was taking its toll. Check out this next post for Day 2, in which we get out of China, explored Macau, and hit Hong Kong, all in a day. http://www.thefuriouspanda.com/2011/03/27/macau-tasty-pasteis-de-nata/
