Satani Bat Bi: November 2012

For our last weekend in Guangzhou, we headed south to Kaiping. It is home to approximately 1800 remaining diaolous of an original 3000. Built between 1520-1920s, these were multi-story watchtowers built both for housing and defense purposes. We took a bus down on Friday night and after we arrived in Kaiping and checked into our hotel room, we were greeted with a massive rainstorm.

We got a pretty decent hotel room for only $30 - view from the window below. China is great, but the pollution levels in water and sky are so grim.

We had arranged with the hotel to have a driver take us to all the diaolou sites the following day. They are scattered throughout the country surrounding Kaiping, and while buses go to some routes, it would be pretty complicated/time-consuming to schedule all the routes and pickup times and whatnot.

Here's a map of the diaolou sites we wanted to visit:

Heading out of town to start we saw this adorable family - super colorful and all squeezed on one moto:

First we went to Sanmenli Village to see the oldest diaolou.

Tiny, narrow streets:

Elaborate door decorations:

Cat ladder (seriously a cat had just used the ladder to climb into the window, but I wasn't quick enough with my camera!):

Diaolou:

More beautiful over-the-door art:

The next area, Canada Village, wasn't so much a village as an abandoned site:

It felt very secret-garden-meets-old-Italy:

We wandered down this path:

And came across this beauty:

And this!

So these were more houses than towers. We made our way back to the van and found our driver working on his fishing nets.

Next on the journey was Zili Village. Unlike the other stops thus far, Zili Village is one of the best-preserved and touristy-developed areas. In these diaolous there remains furniture, pictures, descriptions of the families who lived there, and you can go up in some of these watchtowers.

On the way there, our driver was pretty aggressive about taking over the entire road...

Note the benches in the background.

Our first look at Zili Village.

With massive wheat (grain?) fields all around, the end product was spread across all available roads to be dried.

Diaolous:

Diaolou by the field:

Stained glass paneling inside a diaolou:

Traditional marriage bed in a diaolou:

Climbing up inside a diaolou, the view across the valley:

Neighboring diaolous:

Diaolous:

Goslings!

Some of the signage:

Li Garden was the next stop on our route. It was a bit similar to the other diaolous, but felt more grand and spread out, with mansions and gardens.

Li Garden:

Li Garden:

Across all the diaolous we saw, there was a tremendous amount of detail to tiling, mosaics, ceiling and wall art - it was just a matter of how well preserved they were.

Also in every diaolou we visited, there was an ancestral shrine on the second highest level, just below the exposed roof. They all usually had incense burning, candles, money, fruit, and an elaborate rock shrine with etchings.

From a high window of the diaolou, you could see a large aviary on the ground that we later found out housed a number of beautiful birds.

Murals on the wall:

A smaller diaolou over the canal:

Now lunch! The first place our driver stopped at had a giant picture of a dish made of chicken feet. Having already had a bad experience with chicken feet (we ordered by pointing at a picture on a menu that we thought was noodles and veggies, and we got chicken feet and veggies), we skipped that place. Our next stop was MUCH better. Thanks to another guest helping with the translation, we were able to order tofu and noodles & veggies.

Indoor-outdoor restaurant and store:

Satiated, we headed to MaJianglong Diaolou Cluster. While the village was established in the 1740s, the diaolous weren't built until the early 20th century.

The village is still very-much lived in, so the path to see the diaolous wanders around the outskirts of the town (which is so much better than awkwardly walking past someone's home and taking pictures of the wonders you came to see). Here's the bamboo-fringed path:

Inside the ground-floor kitchen of a diaolou:

Other side of the kitchen, wall murals, and the stairs heading up. I was so surprised how easily we could walk around and in these amazing old buildings. Sure, there were some signs that said 'do not touch' but not much more. Unreal.

From the study:

This feature was so genius. In the middle of the floor for three consecutive stories, this grate facilitated the natural ventilation of the house, keeping it cool and airy.

Peacock paintings above a doorway. Not just the incredible detail, but the way they are so well intact after all these years says so much about the quality of the materials they must have used.

View from the roof.

Roof access:

More diaolous:

Continuing path:

The star fruit orchard:

We came out of a path to find this wishing tree. Wishes could be hung around the tree's base, or on ribbons that were attached to small sandbags and then tossed up to the trees branches - you can see some hanging here:

Wishes circling the tree:

Looking up:

We'd spent so much time at the earlier sites that we had to cut one short and skipped straight to the last stop - Chikan Village. Many Chinese movies and TVs have been shot along this street, and given the pictures we saw in advance, we couldn't wait to see it ourselves. Buuut I think the other photos might have been photoshopped.

The image we saw before we got there: