Building for family glory: Guangdong’s architecture of success

The southern coast of China has been dotted with farming and fishing villages since the Song dynasty, and has been inhabited by indigenous people and successive waves of migrants from central China. Over the millennia, generations upon generations of hardworking people created large towns and cities, demonstrating wealth and prosperity through vibrant trading activities. The vernacular buildings of Guangdong province emerged from a combination of local and central Chinese construction practices. 

As in northern China, villages, towns and cities consisted of individual compounds organised with one or more courtyards. Large temples, ancestral halls and aristocratic mansions could contain tens of courtyards while more humble houses might have only one main courtyard. Buildings of varying sizes surrounded these courtyards. They generally had timber structures enclosed by brick walls on three or four sides. Due to the sub-tropical climate in Guangdong, the sides of the buildings facing the courtyards were usually large and open, allowing for better ventilation. Larger windows were also a characteristic feature of these buildings. 

Wealth of materials, good taste

The wealthiest could afford walls constructed with polished grey bricks, bonded with pointing of a few millimetres. Guangdong bricks were fired at high temperatures, resulting in exceptional hardness and a jade-like greenish tinge. With such minimal pointing, the walls of these houses appeared almost like polished stone, marked by fine, sharp lines. Other features that demonstrated the wealth invested in these buildings included sumptuous wooden and brick carvings throughout the buildings. The decorated motifs are usually drawn from auspicious plants, animals, mythological figures and operatic stories. 

One notable example is the Chen Academy, constructed in the 19th century and consisting of more than nine courtyards and 19 buildings. Used as a hall for honouring the ancestors of the Chen clan, the academy served as a site for rituals and ceremonies intended to reinforce clan identity and educate the younger generations in the ways of their ancestors and the principles of Confucianism. 

This purpose is reflected in the formal and symmetrical layout of the compound. Visitors experience the spatial qualities of the Chen Academy by moving through the covered interiors of the buildings into the courtyards between them. The successive alternation of darkness and brightness, and of enclosed and open spaces, naturally creates a sense of awe and respect. The large courtyards allow nature — in the form of light, wind and rain — to enter the buildings, creating a microcosm within the academy. The courtyards also serve as ceremonial spaces and are as important as the covered buildings themselves.

The degree of ornamentation depended on the owners’ wealth and personal taste. A desire to express auspiciousness permeates almost every form of decoration found throughout these buildings. The aspirations of the people who owned and inhabited the houses were expressed through symbols representing happiness, peace, wealth and prosperity. Deer, for example, symbolised wealth. Even the sculpted reliefs depicting operatic stories served as didactic instruments, promoting moral virtues among members of the Chen clan.

Distinctive diaolou or Kaiping towers

In Kaiping, a county-level city, a unique architectural form developed: towers several storeys high. Unlike single-storey houses, these vertical structures stand out prominently in the village landscape. Kaiping towers might have some similarities with the medieval towers of Bologna, also inscribed on the World Heritage list. However, Bologna towers are tall and slender, built on a small footprint, while Kaiping towers are generally three to five storeys tall with a larger footprint. But like the Bologna towers, Kaiping towers — known in Chinese as diaolou, or defensive towers — were built to protect their owner’s wealth from bandits. 

Although the diaolou were used to protect households during bandit attacks on villages, they were also large enough to serve as living spaces during peacetime. Similar structures can be seen in northern Guangdong province, but Kaiping’s diaolou are distinctive both for their sheer number and for their fusion of Chinese and European decorative motifs. Nearly 2,000 towers survive today, and more than 20 towers from four village clusters were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2007.

The construction of diaolou can be traced back to the late Ming dynasty, a period of considerable instability along China’s southern coast. However, the vast majority of diaolou standing today were built in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, during the late Qing dynasty, when the society was again insecure. 

Brick by brick with migrant funds

Warfare and natural disasters drove many people toward the South Seas in search of refuge from famine and instability in their home regions. Some of these migrants, or their descendants, later returned to southern Guangdong after accumulating wealth and contributed to the development of their ancestral villages. Kaiping was no exception. Returned migrants, as well as those who sent money home to fund construction, sought to leave their mark on the diaolou they sponsored. They therefore introduced European motifs inspired by colonial buildings they had encountered in Southeast Asia, where they had settled. 

Most early diaolou were constructed from rammed earth, stone or brick. Their height was limited by the use of these materials. In particular, the brick diaolou followed traditional building techniques, with few openings on the lower floors apart from narrow slits for firing weapons. They also featured rounded turrets and relatively little decoration. 

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, modern construction technologies were introduced from Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, and concrete came to be used increasingly. In the survey of diaolou undertaken in preparation for the World Heritage nomination, approximately 80% of the 1,800 towers surveyed were found to be constructed with concrete. 

Towering standouts

The towers were either built as the final structure along the central axis of the compound consisting of two or three courtyards, or as independent structures located near the villages. Ruishi Lou, built by Huang Bixiu in his home village of Jinjiangli in 1923, is one example. Huang returned from Hong Kong to build the nine-storey tower, which stands at 28.37 metres high. It was built of reinforced concrete with steel reinforcement, cement, coloured glass and other modern materials imported from Hong Kong. 

Each side of the tower has three window openings. Inside, it contains a complete suite of living spaces, including a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen and a toilet. The seventh floor has a surrounding veranda with columns and arched openings. Small domed pavilions at the four corners provide expansive views of the surrounding countryside. The tower is topped by an octagonal room with a raised dome roof. Its decorative structure consists primarily of European Baroque motifs. 

The building stood out among the surrounding bamboo groves less as a defensive structure than as a statement of its owner’s status: it was the tallest tower in the area and the most richly decorated. Both the Chen Academy in Guangzhou and Ruishi Lou in Kaiping county demonstrate the importance of sophisticated building techniques, fine detailing and elaborate decorative schema. They also express the owner’s desire to communicate identity, moral values and wealth. Architecture thus became one of the most visible means for expressing these aspirations.

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