Here's a by now out-of-date description (about five years old) and suggested plan, but check all prices and frequencies for public transport (conversions are given on a rather higher exchange rate than currently exists).

Much of southern Guangdong is a sprawl of untidy and often grim manufacturing, where sweated labor produces the world’s toys. But Kaiping, 136km (85 miles) southwest of Guangzhou, 164km (102 miles) from the Macau border, and also reachable by sea directly from Hong Kong, is China at its most bucolic. Peasants in conical straw hats bend over their plants, and position hand-powered threshing machines on shoulder poles, much as in other provinces. But here they often toil beneath the gaze of extraordinary towers called diaolou, which are partly Portuguese Gothic, like Citizen Kane’s Xanadu broken into nearly 2,000 fragments and sprinkled across the county. Some squat brick fortresses dating back to the 17th century were intended as places of refuge for whole villages. But more alien watchtowers were mostly built by Chinese who traveled out through the treaty ports and returned wealthy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to buy land, build a house, and marry. Simple concrete towers were merely lookout points intended to provide warning of approaching bandits, but by the 1920s these had evolved into massive fortified residences up to nine stories high, sprouting turrets and loopholes, balconies and cupolas, borrowed from half-understood European styles encountered everywhere from Macau to Manila. Of around 3,000 originals, 1,833 still stand, towering over almost every village. A representative sample can be visited in a day by taxi, or Kaiping town can used as a base for exploring by public transport and on foot.

There are around 50 buses daily to Kaiping from Guangzhou (about 2 hr.; last bus back at 6pm; ¥30/$3.75).

The oldest surviving diaolou is the Yinglong Lou at San Men Li, 15 minutes west on the main road and passed by many local buses. A narrow pine-lined path leads to the village, and the tower is through a narrow passage between ancient houses. It’s a three-story solid brick place of refuge, the lower two reddish stories built sometime between 1436 and 1449, and the upper gray one added in 1919. The villagers suffered serious flooding in 1884 and 1908, took refuge in the upper stories, and survived. Their descendants are pleased by your interest and very proud that they kept their diaolou when everyone else knocked theirs down (brick can be recycled for other uses—concrete cannot, so most survivors are of later date); they may unlock the tower so you can climb the bare interior.

The largest single collection of diaolou is at Zili Cun. Almost any bus passing San Men Li will drop you at the right-hand turn towards Tangkou, where there’s a convenience store and some small restaurants. Motorbikes here will take you to Zìlì Cun, turning right again where there’s a gas station after 4km (2 1/2 miles), and then going through Tangkou. Most buses from Kaiping drop you at the gas station (every 20 min.; ¥4/50¢), from where it’s a 5-minute walk into Tángkou and a 45-minute walk beyond that on a country lane which swings left into Zìlì Cun at the last moment. Or you can stay on the bus until a closer stop, when you’ll be pointed vaguely across the paddies and duck ponds to a visible cluster of towers. Taxis from Kaiping charge about ¥70 ($8.75) per hour. They can also take you to Zili Cun and wait for 1 hour for ¥80 ($10).

The 15 towers close together here, like a miniature city, are scheduled to be the first developed for tourism—a new road big enough to take tour buses is being built. This is a very impressive group of towers, with little stone paths weaving through the marshy ground on which they stand; the marsh no doubt contributes to the slight lean some of them display. Wooden signs indicate a viewing route, but you won’t exactly be elbowing your way through hordes of other visitors, although there’s sometimes a pause as a gaggle of ducks crosses from one damp patch to another. Villagers chop sugar cane, geese seek shade beneath banana palms, and crabs cluster beneath bridges. Most of the towers are three or four stories high, made of concrete, their top stories decked with arches and balustrades, ornamental urns, and turreted corners. Perhaps the most elegant is the taller Mingshi Lou, on the right towards the rear of the village. There are plans to open this as a museum, as it retains late-Qing furnishings and a top-floor ancestral shrine. The last bus back from the Tangkou turning is at 6pm.

Further southwest, about 35 minutes from Kaiping on buses heading to Chikan (¥4/50¢), Xiabian Cun has a rather different tower, the five-story Shì Lou of 1924, to the left as you enter the village. Cement, unknown in mainland China, had to be imported from Hong Kong at considerable expense, and the ingenious alternative was to make a tower of rammed earth, sugar, lime, and sticky rice. The clayey red soil has left its warm color in the pink-ochre walls, and the pits left by its extraction are now fishponds beside a row of ancient housing. Limited supplies of cement were reserved for the tower’s top, with its balcony, pepper-potted corners, and domed pavilion.

Further southwest at Xiagang, 50 minutes and ¥4 (50¢) from Kaiping, are perhaps the oddest tower and the most impressive tower of all. Motorbikes meet buses, but it’s much more enjoyable to do this on foot. The first tower is about a 2.5km (1 1/2-mile) walk. Cross the river bridge with views of river-going vessels, homes to their owners, with firewood stacked on their decks, and turn left onto Dong Long Lu (East Dragon St.). After a short distance, the path passes a gate and shrinks to a track before reaching the unspoiled and friendly little village of Dong Xi Cun. The third narrow alley between the traditional houses leads to a vast European-influenced mansion, whose owners went back overseas again and are now said by the villagers to be in San Francisco. Carry straight on and descend to a decent, metalled road. Turn left, making a note of where to turn off on your return. Passing the occasional armchair grave, water buffalo wallowing in the paddies, rice and buffalo dung laid out to dry on the road, you reach the first major village on the left; the village of Nan Xing Li is beyond this one on the right.

Here’s China’s answer to Italy’s Torre di Pisa, a slender six-story concrete finger called the Nan Xing Xie Lou (Leaning Tower of Nan Xing), 2m (5 1/2 ft.) in height and inclined severely but very photogenically to one side. It is reflected attractively in the village pond. The tower’s top is out of alignment, with an annual lean increase of 2cm ( 4/5 in.)—so though it has survived since 1902, you’d better see it while you can. Even when just completed, it was already leaning so far the watchman had to put bricks under one side of his bed.

Returning to Xiagang, turn right and recross the bridge, then turn left and walk straight out the other side of town; the narrow road wriggles between other diaolou en route. Once you’re in the fields, fork left. There are optional diversions into other villages, but swing left at a junction with a modern pavilion, and the Ruishi Lou in Jin Jiang Li will shortly appear on the right across the waterlogged fields. The road leads past it to the village entrance and across the open area at the entrance, where people shoo pigeons away from drying rice. Any narrow alley between the ancient houses where shoeless children scurry among the chickens will take you to the tower’s base. This is perhaps the most magnificent diaolou of all, built by a man who ran a bank and herbal medicine store in Hong Kong. Completed in 1925, it took 3 years to construct using local labor but imported materials. The nine-story tower dominates the village, with its corners and windows decorated from top to bottom, a gallery with domed corners running around all four sides, and a two-story octagonal folly at the top. Nearly as elaborate, the neighboring Shengfeng Lou, completed in 1925 by a returnee from the U.S., has bizarre columns running up two stories of elevated galleries. A motorbike ride out to this village and back will cost around ¥4 (50¢), and to the two sites about ¥10 ($1.25).

There’s much pleasure to be had just by rambling at will through the countryside, heading towards any toothy towers visible on the skyline. Few are still occupied, but many are used for storage, and sometimes the remarkably friendly local people, seeing your curiosity, will invite you to inspect the tower and climb to the roof for a panoramic view of the countryside.

Taxis in Kaiping are mostly Jettas or Santanas with a ¥5 (65¢) flagfall which includes 2km (1 1/4 miles), then a fare of ¥2 (25¢) per kilometer. From 11pm to 5am, flagfall is ¥6 (75¢). Rentals for trips out of town should not involve the meter, however. Bargain down from the first asking price of ¥70 ($8.75) per hour, especially if you plan to be out for a few hours. The first price for Tangkou, a 1-hour wait, and return is ¥80 ($10). Buses to Tangkou, Xiagang, and Chikan leave from two green-arched parking bays at the rear of the bus station. The left is for Tangkou and the right for the other towns; there are about one to three buses an hour between about 6:30am and 5:30pm.

Peter N-H
China