Qualla: Kaiping https://qualla.com/kaiping en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:34:17 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/w/e/b/p/kaiping-wk/hero-small.webp Qualla: Kaiping https://qualla.com/kaiping Kaiping: Introduction https://qualla.com/kaiping/ Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. Someone flying over the Pearl River Delta expecting nothing but flat farmland and factory sprawl would be startled by Kaiping's countryside. Rising from the rice paddies, incongruous among the water buffalo and vegetable plots, stand hundreds of fortified towers — Baroque columns, Romanesque battlements, Moorish domes — fused with the stone and brick of south Chinese village architecture. They are called diaolou, and they tell a story about money crossing oceans and fear living at home. Kaiping was, for over a century, one of China's great emigration ports. Its people went to California and built railroads, to Australia and ran businesses, to Canada and founded banks. When the money came back as remittances, bandits noticed. The diaolou were the answer — part fortress, part family home, part monument to a life lived between two worlds.

Read more: Kaiping on Qualla

Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

]]> Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/e/b/p/kaiping-wk/webp-kaiping-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Kaiping: Towers Between Two Worlds https://qualla.com/kaiping/ Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. The diaolou date mainly from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though some examples are older. Overseas Kaiping families commissioned them through letters and money wired from abroad: build us something strong, something that will keep the family safe when we are...

Read more: Kaiping on Qualla

Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

]]> Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/e/b/p/kaiping-wk/webp-kaiping-towers-between-two-worlds.mp3 0:06 2 full Kaiping: The Villages the Cities Left Behind https://qualla.com/kaiping/ Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. Kaiping today is a city of about 700,000 people, administered by the prefecture of Jiangmen and sitting on the Tanjiang River about 140 kilometers southwest of Guangzhou. The urban center is a fairly ordinary modern Chinese city — a high-speed rail station opened in 2018 connects...

Read more: Kaiping on Qualla

Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

]]> Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/e/b/p/kaiping-wk/webp-kaiping-the-villages-the-cities-left-behind.mp3 0:06 3 full Kaiping: Clay Pot Rice and Country Roads https://qualla.com/kaiping/ Photo credit MossySF, CC BY-SA 4.0. Kaiping dialect is close enough to Taishanese to be nearly mutually intelligible, and quite distinct from standard Cantonese — another marker of the region's particular identity. The local specialty is clay pot rice: bāozǎifàn, cooked in a covered earthenware pot with meat and ve...

Read more: Kaiping on Qualla

Image: MossySF | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/e/b/p/kaiping-wk/webp-kaiping-clay-pot-rice-and-country-roads.mp3 0:06 4 full Kaiping: Chow Yun-Fat and the Film That Used the Towers https://qualla.com/kaiping/ Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. The diaolou achieved a different kind of fame in 2010 when the film "Let the Bullets Fly" — directed by Jiang Wen and starring Chow Yun-Fat and Ge You — became China's highest-grossing domestic film at that time. Much of it was shot in the Kaiping countryside, and the towers prov...

Read more: Kaiping on Qualla

Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

]]> Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/e/b/p/kaiping-wk/webp-kaiping-chow-yun-fat-and-the-film-that-used-the-towers.mp3 0:06 5 full