The city Kaiping has a high concentration of historical buildings ‘diaolou’ watchtowers. There are as many as 1800 of these towers that dot the surrounding countryside of Kaiping, in Guandong province.
The multistory watchtowers were built in the beginning of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) as a defensive response to incessant bandit raids.
Heavy flooding in the area also played into the need for towers and three types of diaolou emerged over the centuries; defensive, residential and communal designed with reinforced structures, thick walls and small windows, they are also built with a mixture of European architecture mixed with typical Chinese .
in the 19 and 20C,local Chinese who migrated to the western world, would send back money to build these classic Chinese style houses as a means to display their wealth using flamboyant designs.In some cases, local builders worked from images on postcards that were sent from abroad, creating unique designs. The towers are now Unesco certified in hope that they will bring more tourism into the area to help preserve all these historical buildings. Now a lot of these buildings are left to be derelict as families all move away from these rural villages. There is one remaining in my mother’s village, but now there are very few families left in the village, mainly the older generations who don’t want to move, and all the ancestral houses are kept for meeting and celebrating their ancestors.
When we arrived, we went up to the graves of my grandparents and honoured their lives with offerings of food and burning of paper money and incense. This happens each year on 4th April – it’s called sweeping the tomb.
christina wilson sweet nothings 