2025 Donna & Dana's China Trip : 06/04/25

Tour 2; Day 6

Today's schedule:

Packup and travel to Kaiping
Cangdong Cultural Heritage Village
Kaiping Diaolou, Zili Village

This morning it was breakfast then on the tour bus for a 2-hour trip to the Chinese Cultural Heritage Village of Cangdong. There we were initially greeted by Prof. Tan who presented an introductory lecture. This, from one of her web posts -

Cangdong Village has a history that stretches back 25 generations, and it’s home to an eye-catching array of hybrid architecture that liberally mixes both Western and Chinese influences. Constructed at the start of the early 20th century by returning overseas Chinese, Cangdong’s homes, ancestral halls, and fortress watchtowers — or diaolou — form a kind of living museum. Through them, we can chart the fortunes of the village’s overseas Chinese population over the course of the early 20th century.

After the introduction Prof. Tan introduced some of the villagers who performed a welcome "Lion Dance" after which a local musician/teacher demonstrated two ancestral instruments - one resembled a recorder and the other a slide guitar. After that we were treated to a calligraphy demonstration in the Xie temple. Then lunch was served in the same area we had seen the musical instrument demonstration, reconfigured for banquet style serving - no whinny note in my journal so it must have been good...

From Cangdong we rode the bus to the Kaiping Diaolou Zili Village. Zili Village was named from the hope of “live on the hump” or “self-dependence”. It has 92 residences in total, 77 traditional folk houses, between 9 and 15 diaolou buildings (depending on the source and definition) and 6 cottage-style villas. A diaolou is essentially a towering structure in a village that served as lookout and for self-defense. Amongst the buildings, the Mingshi building, perhaps most famous of the bunch, was open for us to tour the inside. It was built by the overseas Chinese Runwen Fang in 1925 after returning from Chicago. We toured the 5 floors inside the Mingshi diaolou, which was extravagantly furnished with period furniture, artwork and photographs. Following the Mingshi tour we toured various parts of the Zili village that is said to have permanent residents and of whom we saw some evidence.

After about 2+ hours at the Zili village we boarded the bus and went back to the Cangdong village restaurant for dinner and a show - a "Cantonese Opera" - that featured two actors and five musicians. My journal notes indicate that the dinner - Chinese banquet - was good. The opera was very interesting but got a bit long as there were two shows separated by a costume change intermission. Following the opera we once again got on dabus and headed to our hotel for the next two nights, the Pan Tower International Hotel.

The entrance to Cangdong village. Most of the villages we saw on this tour had an entrance gate/arch similar to this (but maybe not as nice/extravagant) ...

... as well as a body of water (again, maybe not as nice as this one), and homes, several or maybe only a few. Here walking into the village.

In Cangdong, several structures have undergone extensive restoration. The building on the right is the Xie family ancestral temple

We were greeted by Prof. Tan who introduced some village musicians and three men who performed a welcoming lion dance. The dance went on for easily over a half hour - I think the youngest dancer was 78 and it wore me out just watching the dancers and musicians perform for that long. Note for later - that building with the carport on the left of this picture is a restaurant-event center. A sleeper from the front but wait until you see the back...

The lion dance with the musicians in the back. The man in the red shirt was the third dancer - they had to spell each other as the dance was quite energetic, which, of course, is not captured in this picture.


The lion eventually made its way to the back of the event center where there was a small temple on the porch of which the lion "ate" offerings (i.e. tips) from the onlookers. My sense is that they earned 10x every Yuan they were given...

The unsung heroes of the performance - the musicians (no pun intended, but they didn't sing...)

These next few pictures are from the back of the restaurant/event center - extraordinary...

Here we watch as the musician explains the slide guitar-like instrument

... then demonstrates with music he wrote

Demonstrating the recorder-like instrument. I'm certain there are correct names for these instruments, I apparently didn't write them down and I unfortunately don't remember them... :-(

Here, inside the Xie temple, Prof. Tan introduces the calligrapher (standing in the blue shirt on the left). He apparently is quite famous, teaches calligraphy and sells calligraphic art world wide.

This scroll is an example of his work (I'm sure there's a more correct name than "scroll", I don't know it though...)

Some closeups of the above work...

A different example...

... that is quite intricate. I think I recall that these pieces took several weeks to finish.

Here he demonstrates a larger format. Several folks bought personalized works that he delivered later in the week.

View looking out of the 2nd story of the Xie temple...

... and, from the same place, through the arches to the adjacent building - working on my artisticness here (yeah, that's a word... in this blog anyway...)

Restoration well under way...

... with some not-so-ancient additions.

I met this guy in the parking lot while I was waiting, he was touring China in his car (behind) that was outfitted with a camper-like structure that pulled out when he raised the hatchback. We spoke for about 1/2 hour mostly about car touring. He said he wanted to do the same in the US but was concerned about driving. I replied that if he could handle driving in China, driving in the worst the US has to offer would be a walk in the park. He, like the few other Chinese citizens I spoke with, tentatively brought up >>our<< dear leader (he didn't call him that...) basically asking "What the heck (pick your own intensive noun) is going on?". I replied to all of these queries with, I don't really know but we can both hope it ends soon...

This introduction greeted us to the Kaiping Diaolou Zili Village, it says

Kaiping Diaolou is a multi-story tower-style vernacular architecture that integrates defense, housing, and Chinese and Western architectural arts. It originated in the late Ming Dynasty and reached its heyday at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. From the functional point of view, it can be divided into types such as residential building and building replacement. In terms of building materials, it can be divided into stone buildings, rammed earth buildings, brick buildings, and reinforced concrete buildings. The upper part has traditional Chinese hard mountain top style, hanging mountain top style, and foreign architectural forms and architectural styles in different periods. The biggest feature of Kaiping Diaolou is that different foreign architectural styles are selected and integrated according to their own wishes, and they are self-contained. It is a historical testimony to the mutual influence and close interaction between Chinese immigrant culture and different ethnic groups in the world, and to jointly promote the development of human civilization.

The Zili village seemed larger than most of the villages we visited, and much wealthier - the Beverly Hills of Kaiping back in the day...possibly?

The greeting committee above a door as we enter the village.

This is the Mingshi diaolou, arguably the most popular building in the village and the only one we got to tour inside

Note the cylindrical outcropping corner features - "swallow nests". Our guide told us these were where riflemen were stationed to defend the building, they even had holes in the floor to shoot through.