Kaiping

This article is about the city in Guangdong. For the district of Tangshan, Hebei, see Kaiping District. For the ancient city in Inner Mongolia, see Shangdu. For former county in Liaoning, see Kaiping, Liaoning.

Kaiping 开平市
County-level city
Dixi Road in Chikan, Kaiping
Location of Kaiping City (pink) in Jiangmen City (yellow), Guangdong province, and the PRC
Country	People's Republic of China
Province	Guangdong
Prefecture-level city	Jiangmen
County seat	Changsha Subdistrict (长沙街道)
Area
• Total	1,659 km2 (641 sq mi)
Population  (2010 census)
• Total	699,242
• Density	420/km2 (1,100/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+8 (China Standard)
Postal code	529300
Area code	0750
Website	www.kaiping.gov.cn

Kaiping
Simplified Chinese	开平
Traditional Chinese	開平
Taishanese	Hoi3 Pen6 (Kaiping dialect)
Hanyu Pinyin	Kāipíng
Postal	Hoiping
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Kāipíng Yue: Cantonese Jyutping hoi1 ping4 other Yue Taishanese Hoi3 Pen6 (Kaiping dialect)

Kaiping (Chinese: 开平) is a county-level city in Guangdong province, People's Republic of China. It is located in the Pearl River Delta and is part of the Greater Jiangmen Region, the ancestral homeland of many overseas Chinese. It has a population of 680,000 as of 2003 and an area of 1,659 square kilometres (641 sq mi). The locals speak a variant of the Taishan dialect. Kaiping is one of the homeland of overseas Chinese of Taishanese people and Chinese Americans.

Administration

Administratively, Kaiping City is under the jurisdiction of Jiangmen. It was set up as a city in 1993.

Geography

Kaiping City is located 140 kilometres (87 mi) away from Guangzhou, in the southwestern part of the Pearl River Delta. Kaiping consists of three port cities: Changsha, Xinchang, and Dihai.

Sights

Ruishi Diaolou

The Kaiping Diaolou (碉樓) are fortified multi-storey towers which were constructed in the Kaiping area from the early Qing Dynasty, reaching a peak in the 1920s and 1930s, when there were more than three thousand of these structures. Today, approximately 1,800 diaolou are still standing. The diaolou served two purposes: housing and protecting against forays by bandits. The Kaiping diaolou and villages were added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2007.

Kaiping has traditionally been a region of major emigration abroad, and a melting pot of ideas and trends brought back by overseas Chinese made good. As a consequence, several watchtowers incorporate architectural features from China and the West.

Examples include:

• Ruishi Diaolou, located behind Jinjiangli Village, Lianggang Township. Constructed in 1921, it has nine floors and is the highest diaolou at Kaiping. It features a Byzantine style roof and a Roman dome.
• The diaolou cluster spread across the three villages of Anhe li, He'an li and Yong'an li has 15 diaolou and houses
• Li Garden, in Beiyi Xiang, was constructed in 1936 by Mr. Xie Weili, a Chinese emigrant to the United States.
• Fangshi Denglou - Built in 1920 after contributions from villagers, this denglou is five storeys high. It is referred to as the "Light Tower" because it had an enormous searchlight as bright as the beam of a lighthouse.
• Bianchouzhu Lou (The Leaning Tower), located in Nanxing Village was constructed in 1903. It has seven floors.
• The "Southern Diaolou" located on the riverbank, which was known for seven local soldiers by the surname 司徒 who defended it from the Japanese.

Miscellaneous

Kaiping has been twinned with Mesa, Arizona, United States, since October 18, 1993.

Kaiping was a major source of emigrants at the turn of the 20th century. As a result, a large number of early Chinese Canadian and Chinese American communities had people who originated from Kaiping and its neighboring counties of Taishan, Enping and Xinhui. It is said that there are more Kaipingnese people living abroad today than there are Kaipingnese in Kaiping.

In 1973, various people originated from Kaiping (Hoi Ping) started Hoi Ping Chamber of Commerce Secondary School in Hong Kong.

External links

• Kaiping government website
• Information about the diaolou