Kaiping Diaolou and Villages

Kaiping Diaolou and Villages are a group of fortified multi-storey towers and associated rural settlements in Kaiping, Guangdong Province, China. The diaolou are notable for their eclectic architectural styles and for representing a social response to migration and local insecurity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Visitors to the Kaiping area can see numerous multi-storey towers rising above village roofs, many featuring balconies, reinforced concrete or masonry construction, and decorative motifs drawn from Chinese and Western sources. Photographers and architectural historians come to study the towers’ facades, staircases, and the spatial relationship between towers and courtyard villages.

The towers were largely constructed by overseas Chinese who returned with capital from Southeast Asia and the Americas between the late 19th century and the early 20th century; they served both domestic and defensive purposes. The buildings and villages record patterns of migration, remittance-funded construction, and local social structures during a period of rapid social change.

The towers and villages lie around the county-level city of Kaiping in Guangdong Province, within the Pearl River Delta region of southern China. They are set in largely rural, cultivated landscapes with clusters of towers amid village parcels.

• Diaolou architecture: The characteristic multi-storey fortified towers are known collectively as diaolou and combine Chinese building techniques with Western decorative motifs introduced by overseas returnees.