As soon as I arrived in Kaiping, I saw many gray-white tower-shaped buildings scattered in green rice fields. So this is Kaiping Diaolou. I didn't expect them to be everywhere, ranging from a dozen in a village to two or three in a village. My parents and I visited a watchtower in Tangkou, and saw that its walls were carved with lifelike flowers, birds and trees, and the roof was a tower in the west. There are many daily necessities brought back from abroad, including phonographs and exquisite lamps ... Their windows are all thick iron plates, and the steel bars of the security net are two centimeters thick!
I went to the exhibition hall next to me and learned about the origin of Kaiping Diaolou. It turns out that Kaiping is a famous hometown of overseas Chinese. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the local people were tricked into working as coolies by the Americans and the British. They scrimped and saved money to go home. In order to protect their families and property from losses, some overseas Chinese built various towers when they returned to their hometown to build new houses. In this way, the number of watchtowers has become a major feature of Kaiping, the hometown of overseas Chinese, reaching more than 3,000 at most, and there are more than 1400 existing.
The rich and changeable architectural style of Kaiping Diaolou has greatly enriched the history of local architecture in the world. It not only reflects the history of the people in the hometown of overseas Chinese who struggled hard to defend their motherland, but also is a living museum of modern architecture.
This visit to Kaiping Diaolou broadened my knowledge and learned a lot.