Multi-storey fortified towers built in the villages of Kaiping and neighbouring counties, mostly in the early twentieth century with money sent by emigrants. They combined defence against bandits and floods with architectural styles copied from abroad.

Historic city · Cultural centre · Guangdong

Jiangmen

江门 (Jiāngmén)

Homeland of the overseas Chinese and the Kaiping diaolou

Jiangmen is a prefecture-level city in the west of the Pearl River Delta. Its five historic counties, the Wuyi (五邑), were the ancestral home of a large share of the early Chinese emigrants to North America and Australia, and the fortified towers they financed at home — the Kaiping Diaolou — are a World Heritage site.

ProvinceGuangdong

Key facts

Province: Guangdong
Administrative level: Prefecture-level city
Area: about 9,507 km²[1]
Resident population: 4.80 million(as of 2020 census)[2]
UNESCO World Heritage: Kaiping Diaolou and Villages (2007)[3]

Overview

From the mid-nineteenth century, men from Taishan, Kaiping and the neighbouring counties left for the gold fields and railways of California, Canada and Australia, and later for South-East Asia and Latin America. For decades Taishanese was the dominant Chinese dialect of American Chinatowns.

Remittances transformed the home villages: emigrants built schools, libraries, arcaded market towns and thousands of diaolou — fortified multi-storey towers, often with Western-style tops — to protect families from bandits and floods. About 1,800 survive in Kaiping alone.

Names and nicknames

侨乡 (qiáoxiāng)
“homeland of overseas Chinese”
The city calls itself China's foremost qiaoxiang; millions of people of Jiangmen descent live abroad.
五邑 (Wǔyì)
The five counties of Xinhui, Taishan, Kaiping, Enping and Heshan.

History

The coast at Yamen, in Xinhui, saw the end of the Song dynasty in 1279, when the last Song fleet was destroyed by the Yuan. Xinhui was the home of the Ming philosopher Chen Baisha and of the reformer Liang Qichao. Mass emigration began in the 1850s; the diaolou were built mostly between the 1900s and the 1930s.

1279
Battle of Yamen
The Southern Song court's last fleet was defeated; the minister Lu Xiufu jumped into the sea with the child emperor Zhao Bing.
1850s
Emigration to the Americas and Australia
News of the gold rushes drew tens of thousands of men from the Siyi (四邑, “four counties”) abroad.
1920s–1930s
Peak of diaolou building
Most of the surviving towers were built in these decades with money sent from overseas.
2007
Kaiping Diaolou inscribed as World Heritage
Four village groups — Sanmenli, Zili, Majianglong and Jinjiangli — were inscribed.

Landmarks

Historic site
Zili village
自力村 (Zìlì Cūn)
Village of diaolou and villas among rice fields and ponds in Kaiping.
Historic site
Majianglong
马降龙 (Mǎjiànglóng)
Group of villages with diaolou set in bamboo groves along a river.
Street or quarter
Chikan old town
赤坎古镇 (Chìkǎn Gǔzhèn)
Riverside market town of arcaded shophouses built with overseas money.
Nature
Little Bird Paradise
小鸟天堂 (Xiǎoniǎo Tiāntáng)
A single banyan tree that has grown into a wooded island in Xinhui, home to egrets and herons, made famous by an essay by Ba Jin.
Historic site
Liang Qichao's former residence
梁启超故居 (Liáng Qǐchāo gùjū)
The reformer's family home in Chakeng village, Xinhui.

Neighbourhoods

Taishan
台山 (Táishān)
County-level city whose dialect was the language of early Chinatowns.

Food

Xinhui tangerine peel
新会陈皮 (Xīnhuì chénpí)
Aged peel used in duck, red-bean soup and tea.
Taishan eel rice
台山黄鳝饭 (Táishān huángshàn fàn)
Claypot rice cooked with rice-field eel.

Culture

Jiangmen's culture is that of the qiaoxiang: villages with houses built in styles copied from abroad, ancestral halls maintained by relatives overseas, and museums of emigration such as the Jiangmen Wuyi Overseas Chinese Museum. The Taishanese and other Siyi dialects differ markedly from Guangzhou Cantonese.

Getting around

Jiangmen station is on the high-speed line from Guangzhou and Shenzhen towards Zhanjiang.
Kaiping and Taishan are reached by bus from Jiangmen or Guangzhou.

Day trips

Yamen
崖门 (Yámén)
Site of the last battle of the Song, with a memorial temple.
Chuan islands
上下川岛 (Shàngxià Chuān Dǎo)
Islands off Taishan; Shangchuan is where Francis Xavier died in 1552.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Jiangmen Municipal People's Government — Jiangmen Municipal People's Government (retrieved 27 September 2026)
Seventh National Population Census communiqués — National Bureau of Statistics of China (retrieved 27 September 2026)
Kaiping Diaolou and Villages — UNESCO World Heritage Centre (retrieved 27 September 2026)

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