kaiping diaolou
Kaiping Diaolou is a combination of local culture and foreign culture in China, which was mainly built in the 20th century. But its history can be traced back to the Ming Dynasty.
Kaiping County is located in the south-central part of Guangdong Province. Chikan Town used to be called Tuotuo. It used to be a wetland with reeds and water plants. The first person who settled here was Lu Angong. In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen in the late Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1664), the society was in turmoil and bandits often harassed the people. In order to protect the safety of villagers, Guan Zirui, the fourth son of Lu 'an Gong, built Ruiyun Building in Jingtouli Village. This building is very strong and has two functions: flood control and theft prevention. When floods break out or thieves harass, villagers in Jingtouli Village and neighboring Sanmenli Village will take refuge in Ruiyun Building. With the passage of time, the population of these two villages is increasing, and the capacity of buildings is limited. In case of emergency, it is always crowded. In order to ensure the safety of himself and his family, Guan Sheng, the great-grandson of Liu 'an Gong who lives in Sanmenli Village, decided to build a bigger and stronger building in the village.
This building was built in the early Qing Dynasty, facing south. It is about ten meters high and has three floors. The building covers an area of about 152 square meters, which is relatively large. The walls of this building are all made of a big red brick. The brick is 33cm long,15cm wide, 8cm thick, and the wall thickness is 93cm, nearly 1m thick!
It does cost a lot of money to build such a building, so in the middle of it, Guan Sheng found that the money was not enough to finish the building. It is said that his wife Tan saw this scene and took out her own private money, and the building was built. For good luck, Guan Shengren named this building "Ying Long Building".
Seen from the plane, the building is rectangular, but all four corners stand out. There are holes in the four corners of each floor, and a small door with an arched roof is opened on the facade of the ground floor, and a small square window is opened on both sides of the door. From the plane, each floor is divided into the central hall and the east and west wing rooms. From the modeling point of view, the roof is a traditional hard mountain roof, the roof is very small, and there are no eaves before and after.
Although Long Ta is ugly, it is the reason of Kaiping Diaolou.
Sanmenli and its nearby villages are low-lying and houses are easily flooded. Sometimes there are floods several times a year, and the people are miserable. According to historical records, during the two catastrophic floods in Shen Jia (A.D. 1884) and Wu Shen (A.D. 1908) during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, almost all the houses in each village were flooded, but all the villagers who hid in Ying Long Building escaped the danger and survived. As Ruiyun Building has long been destroyed, Kaiping people are famous for the defensive function of Ying Long Building. People respect and admire architecture, but building such a building is too expensive for ordinary people to bear. Therefore, when copying, it is often only a few villages to build a watchtower.
In addition to defending against floods, defending against bandits is another reason for building towers. Kaiping is located between Xinhui, Taishan, Enping and Xinxing counties. Before the establishment of the county, it was always a four-elephant area, and the social order was chaotic. The local government hoped to establish the county to ensure peace. Kaiping County was founded in the sixth year of Shunzhi in Qing Dynasty (AD 1649), so Kaiping County has only a history of more than 300 years. Although the county government has been established, it is not easy to ensure peace in the world.
Looking through the records of Kaiping county, we can see that the function of watchtowers is not only to prevent floods, but also to prevent bandits from harassing them. In 2 1 year, Kaiping County Records recorded the story of "Fengfulou".
In the early years of Qing dynasty, thieves were rampant, not only breaking into houses at night, killing, raping and robbing, but also kidnapping and extorting money. On one occasion, Xu Long's wife was taken up the mountain by bandits, who sent a message for ransom. Xu Long's son, Xu Yi, quickly prepared the money and prepared to discuss the redemption with the gangsters. At this time, Xu Long's wife secretly sent a message: "Mother doesn't have to redeem it, but this gold is enough to serve her father!" That night, Xu Long's wife fell off a cliff and died. Xu Yi built a "father's building" according to his mother's wishes.
Dynasty changes often bring social unrest. After the Revolution of 1911, due to the separatist regime of warlords, wars were frequent, and bandits seized the opportunity to rob people. One night in December of the 11th year of the Republic of China, a large group of bandits looted Kaiping Middle School in Chikan. The searchlight of the nearby Yingcun watchtower suddenly lit up, and the surrounding township groups heard the news and intercepted it in time, and rescued the principal and 17 students.
This incident caused a sensation in Kaiping, and overseas Chinese were also very surprised when they learned it. They think the watchtower really plays a role in preventing bandits. So they would rather scrimp and save, but also raise money to remit to their hometown to build a watchtower. Kaiping people suddenly began to build towers, people constantly summed up their experience in using them, and overseas Chinese introduced advanced western architectural technology, blending Chinese and western, and combining Chinese and foreign.
The buildings of Kaiping Diaolou generally occupy a small area, and people pursue height, which is convenient for overlooking and shooting at night. The structure of the watchtower is generally made of raw soil materials. Adobe walls are divided into adobe walls and masonry walls. Adobe walls are built quickly. As long as the adobe is dry, it can be built from the bottom to the top at one time. In order to prolong the life of adobe, people often spread lime sand on the surface of adobe wall first, and then spread a layer of cement, which can prevent rain erosion and bullet shooting.
The version of the wall is a concrete material mixed with yellow mud, lime, sand and brown sugar water, and rammed into the wall with two large boards. The rammed earth wall of Kaiping Diaolou is not thick, generally more than one foot, which is thinner than Fujian Tulou. The firmness of concrete is equivalent to that of low-grade cement wall, and its tensile strength is greater. However, this kind of ramming method is time-consuming, and the upper section cannot be built until the first wall is dry, so it is unlikely that the giant tower will be completed within one year.
Most of the walls are adobe materials, and some of them are reinforced concrete. But this kind of building is too expensive, so it is rarely seen. At that time, cement was imported, so it was called "red mud" Cement is made of wooden barrels more than one meter high. The ground of the watchtower consists of reinforced concrete floor and wooden floor. Some reinforced concrete floors are terrazzo, bright and beautiful, and the bottom is paved with square glazed tiles, which is very flat. The stair handrails of some watchtowers are exquisitely made, showing European style.
The inner space of the watchtower is generally small. Although there are windows on each floor, there are few windows. Therefore, the watchtower is only used as an emergency. Once that happens, all the people or the whole village will hide in the watchtower. At dawn, everyone went back to the bungalow to rest. In that era when thieves were rampant, young people were stationed on the watchtower to take care of the guns, bronze bells, sirens, searchlights and other preventive devices on it.
There are many shapes of watchtowers, but most of them are square or rectangular tower buildings with a circle of corridors or balconies and several buckets on the top floor. There are gun holes on all sides of the top floor, and some floors have long gun holes that can be shot down, so that gangsters can't get close to the watchtower.
Except for the top floor, all floors have small windows, with vertical iron bars inside and imported steel windows with a thickness of more than three centimeters outside. Small windows are used for ventilation and lighting on weekdays. In case of bandits, close the window sash made of steel plate, and the outside is flat, so that bullets can't get in. There is a small door at the bottom of the watchtower. The doors are all made of steel plates. After being chained, outsiders can't open it or pry it open. And there are guns on it to shoot, so gangsters can't get close.
The lower part of the watchtower is roughly the same in shape, but different in size and height. Large tower, each floor is equivalent to three bays, or even more; Small diaolou, each floor is only equivalent to a half-opened room. The tallest watchtower is the south tower of Chikan Township, which is as high as seven stories, while the short watchtower is only three stories, which is not much higher than ordinary buildings.
The shape change of the watchtower mainly lies in the top of the tower. From the existing 1400 buildings in Kaiping, the shapes of roof buildings can be summarized as 100, but the more beautiful ones are Chinese roofs, mixed Chinese and western roofs, ancient Roman mountain flower roofs, domes, American castle roofs, European and American villa roofs, courtyard balcony roofs and so on.