What is the most famous Kaiping Diaolou?

Kaiping watchtowers and villages have outstanding historical, artistic and scientific values;

First of all, it is a historical witness that China rural areas actively accept foreign cultures.

Rammed earth buildings are distributed in hilly areas, mainly in Chishui Town and Longsheng Town. This kind of watchtower is often called "mud building" or "yellow mud building" in the local area. Although it has been eroded by decades of wind and rain, it is still strong. There are 100 towers, accounting for 5.5% of the total number.

The era of large-scale construction of Kaiping Diaolou is a transitional stage from traditional society to modern society in China. The influence of foreign culture on traditional culture is different. Western-style buildings in some coastal cities in China are mainly passively imported. Kaiping-centered watchtower is the product of China rural people's active acceptance of western architectural art and integration with local architectural art, which fully embodies their self-confidence, openness and tolerance in the face of foreign advanced culture. They put what they saw and heard, together with their aesthetic taste, into the watchtower, making it the spiritual watchtower of their home. Different places of residence and different aesthetics have created various styles of Kaiping Diaolou.

Secondly, it is a concentrated display of foreign architectural art transplanted from rural areas in China.

In Kaiping architecture, there are different styles of foreign architectural art in different periods. The colonnade in ancient Greece, the columns, arches and vaults in ancient Rome, the Gothic pointed arches and Islamic arches in medieval Europe, the components of European castles, the arcades in Portuguese architecture, and the European Baroque architecture in the Renaissance and17th century can be seen everywhere in Kaiping. These architectural elements with different styles, schools and religions show great inclusiveness in Kaiping. They converge in a harmonious place, forming a new architectural type with strong comprehensiveness and showing unique artistic charm.

Third, it is an outstanding representative of overseas Chinese culture in China.

Overseas Chinese are disseminators of culture. The blending and collision of Chinese and foreign cultures is the inevitable product of the development of overseas Chinese culture. The cultural conflict it brought has touched all aspects and classes of China traditional society. This is also the same law of immigrant culture in the world. This kind of cultural conflict and blending is vividly displayed in Kaiping. Whenever you come to a watchtower or a residential building, you can see the traces of the blending of Chinese and foreign cultures. Therefore, Kaiping Diaolou and residential buildings are outstanding manifestations of the profoundness and universality of overseas Chinese culture in China.

Fourthly, it embodies China people's traditional environmental awareness and is a perfect combination of man and nature.

The watchtowers are mainly distributed behind the village, and form a harmonious environment with deep roots, rich wealth and cultural prosperity with the surrounding bamboo forests, ponds in front of the village and banyan trees at the entrance of the village. In front of the point watchtower are low-rise residential buildings, just like the backers of the whole village in the plain area, which meet the psychological needs of the villagers for safety protection. Kaiping Diaolou has become an important means for people in the hometown of overseas Chinese to create a harmonious living environment.