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Published: December 8th 2023
11th Aug: Today was a travel day. After getting a good amount of coffee down my neck, I headed to the train station using the bus. The journey was straight forward and the bus was fairly busy. I had quite a bit of time to kill before my train and Meizhou Station is pretty dead. I bought some snacks at the store there for the train. I also watched quite a few people getting their aerosols confiscated at the security check so it looks like I wasn't the only one ignorant of this rule. The train journey to Guangzhou was about 4 hours long. It wasn't the best journey. The woman sitting on my row expected me to give up my window seat for her son. I think not. She was like you can have the aisle seat. No, getting knocked and bumped by everyone going past is not preferential to having the window seat. I stared out if the window for most of the journey. The scenery wasn't the most interesting and it was a grey and rainy day. I also had some kind of allergic reaction to the paracetamol I took for a headache. I could feel my tongue
swelling and my skin broke out in hives and I was so, so itchy. It was so weird, that has never happened before and I had already taken plenty of the paracetamol in the packet. I didn't want a repeat performance so switched to ibuprofen later in the day.
I had quite a bit of time to kill at Guangzhou South Station. I think I was in some kind of holding area for people transferring trains and not the proper departure area. The place was rammed. I was hungry and the food options were crap. KFC, I'd rather not, or something from one of the convenience stores. The convenience stores only seemed to sell two kinds of sandwiches; chicken or ham, egg and tomato. Two of the things I hate the most in China chicken and tomato. It really was a case of the lesser of two evils so I went for ham, egg and tomato. Edible but only just. When open I headed up to board the train to Kaiping. Luckily for me some bloke pointed me in the right direction as the platform is massive and the train I was taking to Kaiping is a commuter express
so a lot smaller than the normal trains and it was down the other end of the platform. The train journey was fine. I quite liked the commuter train. I was staying out in one of the villages in Kaiping, so got a didi (Chinese uber) to my accommodation as the bus journey would have been over two hours and I was cutting it fine with making the last bus. I enjoyed the drive through the countryside.
Once all checked in and sorted, I headed out for a bit of a walk and in search of some proper food. I really liked the village, Tangkou, that I was staying in. It was pretty small and had some beautiful old buildings as well as some crumbling wrecks. It seems like the area was being revitalised a bit as some of the older buildings were being turned into hotels and guest houses. While I don't think I would like to live here, it is a nice place to spend a few days and explore the area from. When I was taking my walk, I saw some tower style buildings so went for a closer look. That turned out to be a
no-no as a dog that had previously been friendly started barking at me. That was obviously his domain and not mine. His owner came out to placate him and I had to return. I was gutted as I had wanted to get some photos of the tower up close. The village doesn't have a tonne of places to eat and I had read online good reviews of the claypot rice place, so I headed there. It was a small, very local, family run place. I ordered the beef claypot rice (牛肉煲仔饭 nui rou bao zai fan) and sat under the fan waiting for it. Since it was quite late the restaurant wasn't too busy. Claypot rice is a traditional Cantonese cuisine and I can say I don't think I have ever had it. While it looks nice, it just never piques my interest enough compared to other dishes. The dish took a while to arrive, which I presume is down to the cooking method and heating the claypot. I was warned that the dish was very, very hot and not to touch it. The food was sizzling away in the claypot. It was quite a simple dish; a bed of
rice in the claypot a generous portion of beef on top and some spring onion for a garnish. After letting it cool for a little while, I dug in and it was really, really tasty. The sauce was what made the dish, it was salty and fishy and really brought it all together. I hope it's some kind of secret family recipe handed down through the generations. I also enjoyed scraping the crispy rice off the sides and bottom of the pot and eating those. A great end to a not so great day.
12th Aug: There were a few different places that I wanted to see in Kaiping. Not all were super accessible, so I had chosen the easiest to get to for this trip. I decided to start with Zili Village and it was the closest to where I was staying and also the place I wanted to visit the most. When I think of Kaiping and the Diaolous, this is the place I think of. It was about a twenty minute walk from where I was staying so not too bad. I took the main road out of the village and then headed along some smaller
roads. I passed a few villages. I like how all the villages have gates to mark their entrance ways. It just feels really proper, homely and welcoming.
When I got to Zili Village, I made my way over to the ticket office and bought the ticket. I was surprised that you couldn't do it online and that you could only buy tickets for Chengkan old town. I wouldn't have minded if the person in front wasn't asking a million questions and just generally acting like they had all the time in the world. The ticket was 78 RMB. There are lots of free attractions in China, but the ones you have to pay for are pretty pricey. They might not be on Western levels of expensive, but I feel they price out those on lower wages. After getting my ticket I read the information board and perused the map. Most of the buildings in Zili Village were built in the 1930s and 1930s by Overseas Chinese, originally from the area, who wanted to protect their families still there. The Diaolou in Zili Village show the mix of Chinese and Western culture through the mix of architectural styles. There are
15 Diaolou in the village. Diaolou are multi-storey tower-style vernacular architecture that integrates defence, housing and Chinese and Western architectural arts. I have loved looking at pictures of the Diaolou villages online since moving to Guangdong and it has been firmly on my to visit list. I think I have totally romanticised the notion of living in a Diaolou and being safe from the bandits that attacked the area a century before. I also like that they have a bit of an it's abandoned/urbex vibe to them despite being a big tourist attraction.
The village was about a five minute walk away from the ticket office. The first houses I was across the paddy fields were more traditional Chinese houses of two storeys. Still very pretty though and looked like they were lived in. I didn't know that the village was actually still home to people, which I found out later as I made my way around the smaller houses on the fringes. I headed into the village and wandered around these smaller houses. I loved how pretty the doorways were with traditional Chinese murals painted above them and the red good luck banners on each side of the
door. As I got further into the village, I came to the Diaolous. I took about a million pictures of them, I just couldn't stop. Not all the Diaolous are open to the public. The first one I came, Yinong Villa, wasn't. However, there are information plaques at the entrance ways to most of them telling the back stories of the buildings. Yinong Villa was built in 1928 by Fang Wendian after he returned to his home town from Canada. I could just imagine sitting up on the fourth floor with a gentle breeze blowing in and looking out over the countryside. A very peaceful place for retirement. I followed the path to Mishing Lou next. This Diaolou was open to the public and you had to show your ticket and have it stamped to gain entrance. It was built in 1925 by Runwen Fang, who was from the US. This Diaolou was bigger as it consisted of five floors , had an outside kitchen and a courtyard. I enjoyed looking around the house. On each floor there was a map showing the purpose of each room and the furniture was out on display. I loved looking at the old
stuff, trying to imagine the family living there. There were also lots of old sepia photos on display. It was great to get a glimpse of the family. It surprised me that there was a kitchen on each floor and I'm sure I saw some Yorkshire Pudding tins in one of the kitchens. Had this family been partial to one of Britain's finest foods? They probably made cakes in them or something else not as tasty. I loved the views I got as I climbed higher and higher in the Diaolou. The smaller village houses, other Diaolous and rice paddies in the foreground and some low lying mountains in the background. Beautiful scenery. The little pagoda on the roof offered some shade and was a nice place to rest and soak in the views.
Continuing on, I came to Yunhuan Lou, another Diaolou that wasn't open to the public. I liked that the courtyards are accessible though as it lets you get up close to the buildings for pictures. This Diaolou was built in 1921 by Fang Wenxian after his return from Malaysia. Since everyone had the same family name in the village, I wondered how closely they were
all related. I was also surprised that they had all gone to different countries. I also wondered what the insides of these houses were like, if they were in a state of disrepair or just the family wanted their homes to remain private. Looking out the sky was darkening and there were some big storm clouds. I hoped that there wouldn't be a torrential downpour as I didn't fancy getting soaked. I followed a narrow path down the side of a paddy field and came to another shut up Diaolou, Longsheng Lou. This is quite a small looking Dialou and is the oldest in the village dating back to 1917. It was built jointly by Fang Wenlong and Fang Wensheng, whose names have been combined to give the building its name. I walked next to the two Diaolous that I had seen earlier that were very close together. It was a little unusual as most were spread out but these two were side by side. Unfortunately there were no information plaques, there were some people in the grounds selling water and stuff so I suppose you could have asked them and they might have been able to tell you about
them. While I hadn't explored all of the buildings in the little cluster of the village, the path I was taking had me heading further out. Here, I came to some Diaolous that weren't as popular as most people did wander this far away from the centre of the village. Qui'an Villa was built in 1920 by Fang Fuqiu after he returned from the US and Yaoguang Villa was built in1923 by Fang Fuyao after he also returned from the US. I liked my walk around the outskirts. It was very quiet and most of the buildings were shut up. The buildings were quite dark and auster looking, but then had these beautiful splashes of colour with murals between the windows. There was group of middle aged men that were taking pictures of each other, which was quite cute and made a nice change from normally seeing young women doing this.
Back in the centre of the village, I headed into Lansheng Villa, which was another open house. This was built by Lansheng Fang, a Chinese American man in 1936. The ticket checker was on a break when I entered so didn’t get my ticket stamped. It was nice
to look around. I got some different views of the surrounding area as I headed upstairs. I loved looking in the bedrooms and seeing the old safe next to the bed. It been it had been filled with cash and jewellery many moons ago. There were also some fairly recently (in the last twenty to thirty years or so), pictures of the family. It was nice to see the human element behind the house and also made a nice contrast to the pictures I had seen in the the other Diaolou. I had a last little walk around the village. I think there was another open Diaolou, but I totally missed it.
I left Zili Village and headed up the road to the next village. This wasn’t a tourist village, but just a regular one. I think it was called Qiling Village, but I may be wrong about that. The village looked a bit ramshackled and shut up, but there were a few signs of life about. I saw some locals coming and going, there was a dog wandering around, I kept my distance after my past two experiences, and I saw some young tourists taking photos. It made
a nice contrast to Zili Village. I started to head back to Tangkou Village and saw a sign pointing to Zuzhai Village so followed the road around to there. This village was more of a mixed bag. There were some houses that were falling apart, mere shacks, others that were old but well kept and some that were being renovated or had been newly renovated. There was also a pond which seemed to be some kind of tourist mecca as lot of people were getting their photos taken there. I mean it was nice, but nothing amazing. I continued my walk back to Tangkou and a lovely local stopped to offer me a lift, but I was already at the entrance to the village. I headed to the shop for drinks and snacks before heading to a well needed sit down.
I decided to go for a little walk before dinner. Since the village isn't too big, it didn't take me long. I had a walk around the village. I love seeing all the old style buildings lit up at night. They look so pretty, I wish I was better at night photography as I just can't capture them
well enough. I love the giant mural that is on the side of one of the buildings in what could be the village square. It really does appear to tell the story of the people from here, getting on ships and moving abroad, moving to big cities and then returning and building the diaolous. Well at least that is my interpretation of it. The main street was really quiet, there was only a couple of cars going past as I walked along it. The sky was a beautiful blue colour. I walked up to the village I had passed earlier in the day. I didn't enter the village but took some pictures of it from the roadside as it looked lovely all lit up with the large pond in front of it Now it was time for dinner and I headed back to the claypot rice place. Since it was a Saturday night and a bit earlier in the evening, it was quite a bit busier than the day before. I took a table, but it was for a big group so got moved to a small one. The granny that owns the place is so sweet. I ordered what
translates to bacon and bologna or bacon and sausage rice (腊肉拼腊肠饭 la rou pin la chang fan). I didn't really know what to expect. In fact, I thought I had just ordered the bacon claypot rice, but must have pointed to the wrong thing on the menu. The joys of being illiterate. It is a good adventure at times. Since it was busy I had to wait a bit longer for the food, but no big deal, I am glad the place is so popular. It shows that the food must be good. My sizzling claypot arrived and I tried my best to let it cool down a bit, but I still ended up with a bit of a burnt tongue. I liked the mix of the bacon and the traditional Chinese sausage. The sausage is quite sweet and compliments the bacon. The delicious sauce was on the dish, but I felt like this dish needed a bit more of it as it really adds some extra flavour. Still a really delicious dinner.
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RENanDREW
Ren & Andrew
Fusion architecture
I've never heard the term Diaolou and I'm intrigued by your descriptions and photos of them. It's sad that so many of them are abandoned, but making it a tourist attraction and charging a ticket price will hopefully mean the houses will be preserved in some form. Thanks for sharing this unique experience with us :)