Discovering the Kaiping Diaolou

China is an interesting place, and often a fun place, but it usually takes a concerted effort to find a(n aesthetically) beautiful place within it.  One long weekend, in mid-October 2015, Alexa and I were truly lucky to be unexpectedly inspired by secret gardens, sun-drenched rice paddies, and crumbling mansions in villas outside of Kaiping, Guangdong Province, China.  The area quietly harbors an eclectic blend of Eastern- and Western-style architecture exemplified by residential watchtowers dotting the landscape, called 碉楼 Diaolou. Stories happened here - beguiling trysts between the Diaolou Descendants and the River Rats - and in the dusty corners, one might see ghosts.

To set the scene, Kaiping and the rest of the significant places listed here are situated southwest of the Pearl River Delta (Guangzhou and environs) in Guangdong Province, southeast China (just north of Hong Kong).  The Diaolou that Alexa and I hunted down and climbed up are, put together, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The surrounding countryside itself is splendid - something between relaxingly tropical and hazily painted; the Impressionists would have a field day - but the real drawcard are the one-of-a-kind structures built by returned overseas Chinese from the area.  It turns out that a lucky few made fortunes as coolies abroad, and returned to share their newfound wealth with their home villages in the forms of elaborate mansion-towers that combined local Chinese architectural style with whatever the travelers had seen and liked in their foreign homes.  Most of these date from the 1920s and 1930s.  Not only is each one a unique piece of art, but they served the functions of family homes and safe places during floods and wars, as well.  Yet, frustratingly, one can only learn statistical facts by reading the plaques outside - nothing specific about the inhabitants who lived there or the events that took place there.

Getting to the Diaolou clusters takes strategy.  We chose the night train to Shenzhen, one of China's Special Economic Zones and overnight miracles, followed by a three-hour bus to Kaiping, a pleasant but nondescript copy of every other second-tier city in China.  From there, it was a local minibus to the town of Chikan 赤坎, small and consisting of just a few stops.  Chinese tour groups love Chikan because it's been dubbed the "Movie and TV City of China," or something of that sort, due to the Lingnan Studio that's located there.  At first, Alexa and I thought said movie studio might be a church or some other fancy historic thing; when we finally visited, we discovered that most of it was made of styrofoam and stickers.  We liked Chikan because, though it's a young 350 years old by Chinese standards, its crumbling Qilou-style houses, restaurants, and shops lent a unique dilapidated Amsterdam type of feeling to the area.  It was fun just to walk around and look at the distinct architecture, poke around the famous dry goods of the markets, and imagine the lives of the riverboat dwellers.  It was blissfully not crowded at all, and we found an adorable little hostel with a river view near several outdoor eateries of the temporary plastic table variety - the food was nothing to write home about, but the beer and the atmosphere were perfect.  There was a notable lack of cookie-cutter skyscrapers, for the most part.

Now, from childhood until the present day, I have always, always dreamed about finding an abandoned mansion covered in vines.  I did not expect to find one in Chikan, Guangdong, China...but I did.  While wandering around Chikan on the first afternoon, we spotted the ornate rooftop of a diaolou on the horizon and wound our way towards it, past curious farmers and faded red characters that appeared to be Cultural Revolution slogans no one's painted over yet.  The diaolou was surrounded by a high wall covered in vines, which was, in turn, encircled by a mostly abandoned village.  We walked all the way around the structure and tried every possible alleyway, looking in vain for the door. We had almost given up, and made mental notes to practice scaling walls, when, on the "highway" back to town, I spotted a leafy mass stretching across the ditch.  A bridge!  Sure enough, the vines covered a small platform, wrought iron gate, and guarding gargoyles, and we slipped through (unnoticed, we think) to the main courtyard inside the diaolou's outer wall.  Victory!  Reality is better than fantasy, sometimes.  

However, we still need those wall-scaling lessons, because the diaolou are only ornate on top and explorable on the inside - the lower several stories of each one are simply sheer concrete walls with tiny, flat windows covered in bolted iron shutters.  We tried not to feel disappointed in ourselves for not being able to get in here - after all, the watchtowers appear to have served their purpose of being impenetrable (with one known exception - the South Tower, which we ran out of time to visit, was the site of a battle with the Japanese in which seven local men were killed).   

Our first official stop requiring a ticket and a taxi (which also happened to be the most memorable) was Jinjiangli 锦江里 Village, a tiny little hamlet of grey brick that looked more like a Chinese movie set than the actual Chinese movie set.  Our driver dropped us off before it opened, and as no one was in the ticket booth before 9am, we helped ourselves to what we assumed were public streets.  Tourist-wise, we had the place to ourselves (until a couple showed up at the very end) but every local we passed asked us about our ticket.  One man on a motorcycle offered to get tickets for us if we'd just give our cash to him, but being as he didn't actually have the keys to the padlocks on the diaolou, we declined.  We made our way back to the ticket booth where we waited, corralled by watchers, until someone arrived with the appropriate documents.  Thus, the diaolou were opened.  At least they were worth it!  Like an Arabic wedding cake on the outside, the insides resembled a castle with one room on each floor, complete with elaborately carved beds, trunks, and washbasins, and rudimentary kitchens, bathrooms, and a drain that I think was for "showering."  Rushilou, awarded the title of the Number One Diaolou of Kaiping, resides here among the bamboo and two of its neighbors.  The owner, probably on call in Kaiping, arrived with the key just as we were about to write it off as locked and return to our waiting driver.  (Erroneously, I had also assumed we'd be able to call a taxi from any old hotel, but he had known better and left us his card so we could call when we came to our senses.  At least we managed to get a price that was half of what was listed in Lonely Planet.)

The Li Garden 立园, once belonging to just one family, that of Mr. Xie Weili, a US-based Chinese, is impressive.  It's a blend of the Grand View Garden, as depicted in the Dream of the Red Chamber, and Mr. Xie's personal tastes as a result of his impressions of Europe and America - a little Versailles, perhaps?  At first, the village at the front didn't strike us as particularly interesting, but we continued on past a cemetery of miniature diaolou and found an ornate landscape of canals, gazebos, aviaries, and diaolou villages for each branch of Mr. Xie's family.  Just imagining growing up as a child in such an environment strikes dreams of European royalty.  Now, it seems like the perfect place for an artists' retreat.

Zili 自力 Village is the baby of a cornfield and the gothic haunted mansion at Disney World.  The name itself means "self-reliance" in Chinese.  The brochure that came with our ticket said "the stories behind the watchtowers have attracted visitors from all over the world," but, to my chagrin, it neglected to elaborate on any of these stories.  I guess they don't want to appear in a novel...  Nonetheless, it was a pleasure here to wander about the lotus ponds and rice paddies and clamber up the diaolou springing from the flat earth.  Many of these were open and converted into haphazard museums by those who privately own them - there was a (ghastly) tour group here! - but most are shut and emit the perfect vibe for a ghost story, even in bright afternoon sunlight.  It's a shame they're so well locked.  Something in the air here reminded me of St. Augustine.  (Humidity and palm trees, I suppose.)  It reminded Alexa of a safari - strangely-spotted buildings suddenly sticking their long necks out of the otherwise-quiet landscape.

Majianglong 马降龙 Village, according to the brochure that came with our ticket, is "The Most Beautiful Village in the World." That's some seriously high praise.  I wouldn't say it was THAT beautiful, but it was certainly peaceful and picturesque, full of the grey brick houses with tiny, tiny, tiny alleyways as roads between them.  Some of the balconies on the two-story structures were close enough to touch each other.  There are actually five small villages here, administered by two (fueding, surely?) families, and a lot of chickens, some orchards, and a forest that looks like it stepped out of the Lord of the Rings.  The fengshui between the mountain in the back and the river in the front is legendary.  We made it just in time - a large bridge connecting the timeless village to the outside world is in the process of being built.  We left just before sunset.  

Thus, a small weekend jaunt turned into a fantastic adventure.  It felt wonderful to be so suddenly inspired.  As soon as one thinks China is predictable, it sure can surprise.  In my humble opinion, the diaolou just go to show the magical concoctions that can transpire when the right sort of creative people travel the world.  Surely everyone should try...