Kaiping Diaolou is located in Kaiping City, Jiangmen, Guangdong Province. It is one of the representative forms of Guangfu architecture and Guangfu culture. As a special type of Chinese vernacular architecture, the Diaolou are multi-storey tower-like buildings that integrate defense, residence, and Chinese and Western architectural arts. Their distinctive feature is the fusion of Chinese and Western styles, incorporating elements of ancient Greek, ancient Roman, Islamic, and other architectural styles. In 1922, bandit raids in the Chikan area prompted overseas Chinese to build Diaolou on a large scale. At their peak, there were more than 3,000 towers, of which 1,833 still remain today.
On June 25, 2001, Kaiping Diaolou was approved by the State Council for inclusion in the fifth batch of Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level. On September 1, 2002, the Guangdong Province Kaiping Diaolou Protection and Management Regulations came into effect. On June 28, 2007, the application for “Kaiping Diaolou and Ancient Villages” was approved at the 31st World Heritage Conference held in New Zealand, and it was officially inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, becoming China’s 35th World Heritage Site. In December 2017, it was selected for the second batch of China’s 20th-Century Architectural Heritage.
On December 29, 2020, it was designated as a National 5A Tourist Attraction by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. In May 2024, the “Kaiping Diaolou Digital Display Platform” was launched and selected as one of Guangdong Province’s Top Ten High-Quality Smart Tourism Projects, completing high-precision digital modeling for 45 core-area Diaolou. The Zili Village, Majianglong, and Liyuan clusters form the core scenic area of the Kaiping Diaolou Cultural Tourism Zone, which includes representative buildings such as Ming Shi Lou and Pan Li Lou.