Homeschooling with Dad: Kaiping (开平)

We have just come back from a three-day trip to Kaiping. We thought we’d get our travels in quick before the Chinese New Year holiday traffic starts.

Kaiping is a city a couple of hours drive south-west of Guangzhou. Kaiping is notable for three things:

(1) It is the ancestral homeland of a lot of overseas Chinese. It seems that early last century many people from this area headed especially to the US.

(2) Some of these overseas Chinese returned to their home villages and built mansions. They also built up fortified multi-storied towers (Diaolou), to protect themselves from bandits. Thousands of towers were built in the area, with most built in the 1920s and 30s. Most have been abandoned, though some have been restored and are now tourist attractions. There are about 1800 towers remaining in Kaiping. In 2007, they were collectively added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

(3) The old part of the city has many beautiful old buildings. Apparently, it is a popular location for movie shoots.

On Wednesday, six of us (us four, Laolao and Mulan’s friend Tongtong) caught the long-distance bus from Guangzhou to Kaiping. Our hotel, a standard, international style one, was a ten-minute walk from the bus station. We had two rooms. Mama and Laolao slept in one room, while the three girls and I took the second room.

The area that we stayed in was pretty yuk. Anyone who has travelled in China will know the type—a dusty, dirty, small-town, working-class environment with rundown vehicle-repair shops spilling out their equipment onto the street-sides. The main advantage of staying there was that, alongside the ease of travel to and from Guangzhou, all three places we visited during our stay had frequent direct local buses from that bus station.

After dumping our bags in our rooms, we returned to the bus station to catch a local bus into the old part of the city. The late afternoon walk through the old town streets was pleasant. Wandering through the few blocks of old buildings didn’t take long, and within an hour we were back at our starting point. Many of the buildings in the area are falling apart, but their old beauty still shows through.

Back at our starting point, we ate dinner at a local restaurant, sitting at a typical rickety table on the footpath while watching the sky slowly darken. Our dinner, which I thought was just so-so, was cooked over an old wood-burning stove.

On the way back to our hotel, we almost lost Laolao. The problem was that we had to run several metres to catch the bus. The girls jumped on first, and I hurried down the back with them to make sure they were sitting safely before the bus took off (Chinese bus drivers never wait for passengers to sit before they zoom off again). Mama was at the front paying for all of us. The girls and I just assumed that Laolao was at the front with Mama. And I guess Mama just assumed that Laolao had come down the back with us. But Laolao was really still just wandering along outside at her own slow speed. So the bus took off, and the next thing I knew there was a wail as first Mulan realised that Laolao wasn’t with us, then Miya joined in, in harmony. It took a long time for Mama to get through to the bus driver that one of our party was still outside. He did not want to stop. Eventually he did, and Laolao had a long walk (at her slow speed) to catch up to the bus (Mama went out to help her).

The next day, Thursday, we went to see the towers. We chose to visit Majianglong, which consists of a cluster of towers across several villages, all just short walks from each other. The area has been set up for tourists, and we had to pay an entrance fee (40 RMB per adult) to get into the village area. Unlike many other tourist areas in China, however, it was not crowded at all. In fact, we passed very few other tourists all day.

We spent a very pleasant full day, wandering around the area. I thought they had done an excellent job of creating an atmosphere that was organised, yet not over-touristy, while still keeping both the natural environment and the cultural feel of the towers. There were clear signposts (in both Chinese and English) pointing out the directions along well-kept paths that wended their way through bamboo and trees. I guess we must have passed through about half a dozen villages during the day. There was more to see, too, but we ran out of daytime (faster walkers would be able to do much more). We stopped off at one village for an afternoon meal at a restaurant. The food was overpriced and not great, but the environment was so restful, sitting outside in the afternoon sun with nice quiet scenery, that it wasn’t worth complaining about (though Laolao did complain loudly about the price, and worried about the chickens running freely under our feet).

Most of the towers were closed to the public, but we did go up a couple of them. The first we went up was actually the private home of an old lady, who we met walking along the path. Paying her a small amount, she unlocked the doors and let us have a look through. Inside the walled courtyard, she had fenced off an area for her chickens, and in the downstairs entrance she had her living area, with an old sewing machine that she worked at while we looked upstairs.

The second tower we went up is set up as a museum, with free access. In general, the towers are about four or five stories high (I read that the tallest in Kaiping is nine stories high). The windows have bars on them, and can be closed tight with metal shutters. The top of the tower allows a good view of the surrounded area. Apparently, most towers were not used to live in, but only for lookouts and protection when the bandits came. But a few doubled as dwellings.

Towards the end of the day, we came across a grove of star-fruit trees and a huge tree next to a “house of sticks” (actually a storeroom). The girls pointed out that they had not seen any playgrounds during this holiday, and decided that they needed a play-break. This area worked quite well for them to play house.

After playing, the girls suddenly discovered that they were tired. Miya quickly fell asleep in the backpack on my back. The only way to get Mulan to walk the hour to the bus stop (at Laolao’s slow speed) was for her to take my hiking poles.** But we got there in the end. And we didn’t lose Laolao.

(**On a side-note, I highly recommend hiking poles. This was the first trip I used them, and they made it so much easier to walk with a Miya-type weight on my back. I really felt the difference when Mulan took the poles and I had to walk unaided again. Mulan said it helped her, too, so that may be a present for the girls in the future.)

For our final day, Friday, Mama had planned that we would visit an abandoned mansion and tower. Laolao decided that she was too tired to go, and Tongtong didn’t want to go on the bus again (she gets motion sick). Mulan decided that she would prefer to stay and play with Tongtong. After some thought, and some strict safety instructions, we said that Miya could stay with them all in the hotel room, too, if she wanted (of course she did!). In total, Mama and I were gone about three hours. Everyone stayed safe during our absence.

The abandoned mansions and tower were fascinating. In the less than one hundred years since they were built, trees have grown up in, through, on and around them. It is amazing to see how rapidly nature has re-taken the land. Next door to the abandoned mansions, some rubbish-collectors had set up their makeshift homes, and we said hello to their dogs and pigs.