Kaiping (Hoiping), guangdong | 开平广东
Day 11 | 第十一天
Kaiping Diaolou and Villages | 开平碉楼与村落
Upon approaching Zilicun | 自力村, a small village in Kaiping | 开平, the landscape is punctuated by strikingly featured towers known as diaolou | 碉楼.
With the financial support or remittances of overseas Chinese, more than three thousand of these structures were built between 1920s - 1930s. Diaolou were generally made of reinforced concrete. Some served as watchtowers, while others were fortified vertical residences that could be locked down to protect against bandits during a time when there was great political and social instability in the region.
Diaolou, in many ways, reflected not only the movement of people but also the movement of ideas. You can see this clearly in the design elements of the buildings which were uniquely influenced by overseas Chinese as they blended eastern and western architectural details: Roman Ionic columns, Baroque style pediments, and Chinese styled green glazed tile roofs and arches.
Over time, more and more diaolous were abandoned, as overseas Chinese who initially thought they might return to retire in the villages decided to stay abroad, and younger people moved to cities. It wasn’t until the late 1990s/early 2000s when there was a renewed interest in preserving these buildings, which was driven by overseas Chinese who began looking for their ancestral homes and saw the need to fix family properties in their home villages.
Working closely with overseas Chinese, village residents, and government agencies, Dr. Selia Tan of Wuyi University was instrumental in preserving diaolous in the Pearl River Delta region. In 2007, UNESCO designated the Kaiping Diaolou and Villages a world cultural heritage site. As such, there were bilingual signs throughout the village areas, as thousands of people visit yearly. It remains an active community, as local residents still live in some of the existing diaolous. Close to 1,800 diaolous stand today.
Mingshi Building | 铭石楼
We visited a five story diaolou known as Mingshi Building | 铭石楼 that was built in 1925 by Fang Runwen | 方润文— a business man who emigrated to Chicago. Each floor contained its own living room, kitchen, and bedroom areas as it was designed for separate units of the extended Fang family, and was recreated with furniture and ephemera from the early 1900s. Being there felt like sneaking around someone’s home — as if a member of the Fang family might walk-in at any moment. ■