Dazzling tales of newfound wealth aren't new to China. In fact, in the southern coastal province of Guangdong, the nouveaux riches are old news. Villages around the town of Kaiping are still filled with their architectural legacy, dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries when large numbers of Guangdong peasants joined the great migration of Chinese workers abroad. Many went to North America or Australia as laborers. Others established small businesses and came back relatively prosperous. To display their new wealth—and protect it from floods and roving bandits common at the time—they built spectacular blockhouses known as
diaolou. At their bases,
diaolou look like fortifications, with thick walls and turrets. But the upper floors are decorative pastiches of foreign styles, from Greek porticos to Islamic domes, meant to show a returned worker's worldliness.
Nearly 2,000 blockhouses remain in the Kaiping area, most of them built during the Republican era of 1912-49. If you're in Hong Kong (four hours away by ferry) or Guangzhou (a two-hour drive) and fancy a captivating detour, why not go see just how exuberantly this previous generation of affluent Chinese spent its cash? The best place to start, just west of Kaiping, is the village of Zili, which has 15 blockhouses. The stately Mingshilou, built in 1925 by a family that owned a chain of general stores overseas, is now a museum; its top floor has a shrine surrounded by Roman columns. In nearby Xiangang you'll find the opulent Ruishilou, its upper floors a wedding cake of layered balconies. If you like the way the building's name looks on one of the walls, it's because the original owner had hired the province's top calligrapher, a monk from Guangzhou, to inscribe it. When it comes to flaunting it in China, today's big spenders could learn a thing or two from these splendid buildings.
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