Kaiping Diaolou, a lonely beauty standing by itself in the wilderness

The once prosperous Kaiping Diaolou now stands in a great period of fracture. What attracts us is their abrupt and isolated state rising in a vast wilderness. In the small villages with few people, amidst chickens and ducks, they evoke a sense of surrealism.

On an early morning with thin mist, we boarded the bus from Guangzhou to Kaiping. Passing through rivers, ponds, wild villages, and hills, we headed southwest of the Pearl River Delta, 110 kilometers away from Guangzhou City. Upon entering Kaiping, we were greeted by a glittering river. The people of Kaiping live near water, where waterways are well-developed and directly accessible to the sea, reaching Hong Kong and even countries in Europe and America. In this place with a current population of only 680,000, there are 750,000 overseas Chinese scattered across 68 countries and regions. On this land of less than 700 square kilometers, more than 1800 diaolou buildings, built during the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China era, still stand tall. They intertwine with the modern, square residential houses around them, much like a few elderly men dressed in traditional Chinese long robes and wearing Western-style straw hats walking among the fashionably dressed crowd in Guangzhou.