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Kaiping Diaolou and Villages

China
Date of Inscription: 2007
Criteria: (ii)(iii)(iv)
Core zone: 371.948 ha
Buffer zone: 2738.052 ha
Guangdong Province
N22 17 7.87 E112 33 57.1
Ref: 1112

Brief Description

Kaiping Diaolou and Villages feature the Diaolou, multi-storeyed defensive village houses in Kaiping, which display a complex and flamboyant fusion of Chinese and Western structural and decorative forms. They reflect the significant role of émigré Kaiping people in the development of several countries in South Asia, Australasia and North America, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are four groups of Diaolou and twenty of the most symbolic ones are inscribed on the List. These buildings take three forms: communal towers built by several families and used as temporary refuge, residential towers built by individual rich families and used as fortified residences, and watch towers. Built of stone, pise, brick or concrete, these buildings represent a complex and confident fusion between Chinese and Western architectural styles. Retaining a harmonious relationship with the surrounding landscape, the Diaolou testify to the final flowering of local building traditions that started in the Ming period in response to local banditry.

Outstanding Universal Value

The Diaolou and their surrounding villages demonstrate Outstanding Universal Value for their complex and confident fusion between Chinese and western architectural styles, for their final flowering of local tower building traditions, for their completeness and unaltered state resulting from their short life span as fortified dwellings and their comparative abandonment and for harmonious relationship with their agricultural landscape.

Criterion (ii): The Diaolou represent in dramatic physical terms an important interchange of human values - architectural styles brought back from North America by returning Chinese and fused with local rural traditions - within a particular cultural area of the world.

Criterion (iii): The building of defensive towers was a local tradition in the Kaiping area since Ming times in response to local banditry. The nominated Diaolou represent the final flourishing of this tradition, in which the conspicuous wealth of the retuning Chinese contributed to the spread of banditry and their towers were an extreme response.

Criterion (iv): The main towers, with their settings and through their flamboyant display of wealth, are a type of building that reflects the significant role played by émigré Kaiping people in the development of several countries in South Asia, Australasia, and North America, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the continuing links between the Kaiping community and Chinese communities in these parts of the world.

The wholeness and intactness of the nominated properties are evident insofar as all the elements that express their values are still in place; the size of each of the properties is adequate as the features and processes that convey the significance are fully represented in the towers and their surrounding villages of small houses and farmland. The nominated Diaolou, their surrounding village houses, and the agricultural landscape are all authentic, apart from certain houses in Sanmenli Village.

Since 2001, all the Diaolou are protected as national monuments under the Law for the Protection of Cultural Relics, 1982 and also covered by Provincial and Municipal Regulations. A buffer zone has been established. The overall state of conservation of the Diaolou is good; the state of conservation of village houses and the agricultural landscape is reasonable. No extensive conservation works have been undertaken. Nevertheless minor repair works, are carried out where necessary, and inappropriate building interventions have been reversed. A Management Plan for the nominated property has been drawn up by Beijing University under the auspices of the People's Government of Kaiping City. It has been implemented since 2005.

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