The Diaolou in Kaiping in Jiangmen Guangdong and UNESCO World Heritage

The Rui Shi Lao in Kaiping

Kaiping is a county under the jurisdiction of the prefecture-level city Jiangmen in Guangdong province in South-East China.

The diaolou are fortified multi-storey towers. They were constructed in the Kaiping area from the early Qing Dynasty, reaching a peak in the 1920s and 1930s, when there were more than three thousand of these structures. Today, approximately 1,800 diaolou are still standing.

Kaiping, together with its neighbouring counties of Enping, Taishan and Xinhui, are collectively known as the “Four counties”. Many of the Chinese labourers who went to North America, Australia, and Southeast Asia originated from the four counties.

As a consequence, being a region of major emigration abroad, Kaiping became a melting pot of ideas and trends brought back by overseas Chinese. Several of the watchtowers incorporate architectural features from China and the West.

Diaolou
There are four groups of Diaolou and twenty of the most symbolic ones are inscribed on the List. They display a complex and flamboyant fusion of Chinese and Western structural and decorative forms..

The diaolou served two purposes: housing and protecting against forays by bandits. The Kaiping diaolou and villages were added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2007.

The property inscribed at the UNESCO World Heritage List consists of four groups of Diaolou, totaling some 1,800 tower houses in their village settings.

Since 2001, all the Diaolou are protected as national monuments under the Law for the Protection of Cultural Relics.

The overall state of conservation of the Diaolou is good. The state of conservation of village houses and the agricultural landscape is reasonable. No extensive conservation works have been undertaken.

Nevertheless minor repair works, are carried out where necessary, and inappropriate building interventions have been reversed.

A Management Plan for the property has been drawn up by Beijing University under the auspices of the People’s Government of Kaiping City. It has been implemented since 2005.

The Kaiping Diaolou and Villages in China on the World Heritage Tour:
http://www.WHTour.org/1112