Cultural Gems of Guangdong

    After eight months of voting and evaluation, 10 aspects of Guangdong culture, ranging from opera styles to outstanding historical figures, have been chosen by the Guangdong Provincial Government to represent the cultural gems of Guangdong. The 10 gems are Guangdong opera, Cantonese cuisine, the Cantonese arcade building style, Cantonese music, lion dance, the Lingnan school of painting, Duan inkstone, Kaiping diaolou, and two historic figures: Sun Yat-sen, the leader of China’s republican revolution, and Huineng, the sixth Patriarch of the Zen.

    THE Kaiping diaolous in Kaiping County, named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2007, are fortified multi story towers built from reinforced concrete. They served mainly as protection against bandits.

    The diaolou displays a complex and flamboyant fusion of Chinese and Western structural and decorative forms. They reflect the significant role of émigré Kaiping people in the development of several countries in South Asia, Australia, and North America, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the close links between overseas Kaiping people and their ancestral homes, according to UNESCO.

    Today, approximately 1,833 diaolous remain standing in Kaiping. These can be categorized as communal, residential, watch and school towers.

    Aesthetically, the styles of the Kaiping diaolou include many European architectural elements, from Greek columns to Islamic arches, to Portuguese balconies and Indian corridors, all of which blend harmoniously with the traditional architecture.

    Kaiping has long been a region of emigration abroad, and a melting pot of ideas and trends brought back by overseas Chinese.

    As a result, many diaolous incorporate architectural features from China and the West. The towers built at the beginning of the 20th century were mainly paid for by Chinese in North America. Some of the structures have never been claimed by their investors.

    The first towers were built during the early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), reaching a peak in the 1920s and 1930s, when there were more than 3,000 of the structures.

    Ruishi diaolou, located in Jinjiangli Village and constructed in 1921, features a Byzantine-style roof and a Roman dome. It has nine floors and is the tallest diaolou in Kaiping.

    (Jane Lai)