The origin and development of the Kaiping Diaolou owe greatly to the local environment, history, and cultural development of the area. Social security and order also played an important part in the development, as well as the influence of the historical development of the U.S.A., Canada, and other countries. 4,000-5,000 years ago, early inhabitants began to settle in the present Kaiping area. They were indigenous to Guangdong area and were part of the Yue people, who lived by growing rice and fishing. These people lived in huts that were made of branches and fronds of trees. Later they built framed huts, with central timber pillars, and smaller supporting poles around the perimeter. Bamboo, wood, and wild grasses were the main construction materials.

After the Qin-Han period [255 BC – 220 AD], Han Chinese from the Central Plains slowly moved into the area, and gradually became the dominant people of the area. The ethnic characters of Kaiping thus changed. Han Chinese culture consequently became the predominant cultural strand in local life. Influenced by traditional thinking, the inhabitants settled together as clans, building houses of mud-bricks, fired-bricks, and timber, and established their villages in accordance with the dictates of Feng Shui, living away from the outside world in a subsistence lifestyle. They lived close to, and in harmony with, the natural world around them.

At the New Year [late January-early February] they danced with decorated lanterns. At the Duanwu Festival [the 5th Day of the 5th Lunar Moon, usually falling in June] they raced Dragon Boats. At the Mid-Autumn Festival [the 15th Day of the 8th Lunar Moon, usually late September-early October] they dried the fishing nets and put them away for the winter. All these, and other traditional practices, were ancient relics of the Central Plains Chinese culture. At the same time, these settlers were influenced by the environment in which they settled. This brought about many local traditions, which can still be seen today. Since the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the area of today’s Kaiping laid within the four Counties of Xinhui, Taishan, Enping and Xinping. Being remote from all the local administrative centres, the area abounded in bandits, and the security of local society was very poor. Furthermore, the area was subject to frequent heavy floods, when typhoons brought torrential rains, and triggered catastrophic inundations. The villagers started to build Diaolou in the centre of their villages as places of refuge. The Yinglong Lou survives to this day as a representative example of a Diaolou from this early development period. Diaolou in the Ming Dynasty were built simply, using traditional building materials like bricks and timber.

In the 6th Year of the Shunzhi Reign of the Qing Dynasty (1649), the County of Kaiping was established. Since it was hoped that this would lead to an improvement in the local security situation, the new County was called Kaiping [“Kaiping” means “Beginning of Peace”]. Following the establishment of the County, the problem of banditry was greatly lessened. As a result, there are very few Qing period Diaolou.

The period up to 1841 (the outbreak of the First Opium War) can be called the early period in the development history of the Kaiping Diaolou. Kaiping is near the coast. The people of the area were thus exposed to foreign influences, and were much less conservative in their thinking than those in the more inland areas. Many wanted to travel overseas and visit the world outside. Even as early as the mid-sixteenth century, Kaiping people were already venturing overseas in wooden sailing junks, and were already making a living for themselves in South-East Asia.

In 1839 a poor Kaiping farmer called Xie Shede, from Tangkou, left his village to the U.S.A, marking the start of the history of Kaiping people in America. In 1848, 1851, and in 1858, gold was discovered, respectively in the U.S.A, in Australia, and in Canada. Following this, the Governments of the U.S.A. and Canada, began to build coast-to-coast railroads from east to west, and to encourage the development of agriculture. To achieve all these, huge numbers of labourers were required. Gold-field operators and railroad contractors sought out Kaiping residents in the U.S.A. and Canada, and sent them back to Kaiping to recruit labourers there.

In Kaiping, in 1850, and again in 1856-1857, there were outbreaks of inter-ethnic warfare between the Bendi (local natives) and Hakka (immigrants from central China) people. The local Kaiping security situation was thus very poor at precisely this point in time. Furthermore, the population of Kaiping was, in this same period, growing rapidly, and a situation was arising where the land could no longer support the people. Food supply became a matter of concern.

As a result of all this, in the hope of being able to make a living, many Kaiping people left during this period to go to America to look for work. All these factors were the main forces influencing this early period of emigration. From the villages of Kaiping a huge wave of emigration overseas arose. Men called their sons to join them, and elder brothers their younger siblings. Young strong men from the villages began to call their relatives to leave the villages, and to go to Hong Kong or Macao, and from there to take ships to the U.S.A., Canada, or Australia, “to look for gold”.

The Chinese from Kaiping who went to the U.S.A, Canada, or other places, hoping to find gold at the gold-fields, whether they found work there, or on the railroad, or in opening new land for agriculture, in every case had to accept very hard labour. They made huge sacrifices. By the later years of the nineteenth century, however, they had passed the period of the greatest hardships, and were beginning to amass some savings. Especially after the First World War, the U.S.A., Canada, and other countries, went through a period of rapid economic growth. Equally, the fortunes of the Overseas Chinese improved steadily in this period.

However, although the part played by the Overseas Chinese from Kaiping in the economic development of the U.S.A, Canada and elsewhere was extremely significant, they achieved no recognition or status there. From 1882, when the U.S.A. began regulating the inflow of the Chinese, the Overseas Chinese from Kaiping had to live under a regime of extremely unfair social regulations, and in an atmosphere of legal restraints. Living in such a poor social environment, their sole hope and dream, the aspiration of all their hard work, was to return to their native villages, and invest their savings in building a house there, buying fields, and marrying there. They wanted, with all their hearts, to bring their hard-earned savings back to Kaiping. In Kaiping they wanted to build Diaolou in their villages, and to invest all their savings there. The villages from which the Overseas Chinese came became filled as well with villas, and new villages built by the Overseas Chinese sprang up.

As well as remittances from the Overseas Chinese still residing abroad, the life-style of those Overseas Chinese who had returned to their villages was also a source of major improvements in the villages.

However, as some of the returned Overseas Chinese families were wealthy, and it was well-known that they had returned to live in their villages, this attracted bandits into Kaiping to raid and rob. The bandits not only plundered the villagers of their valuables, they often took people captive for ransom. From the 1st Year of the Republic (1912) to the 19th Year (1930), Kaiping suffered no less than 71 major irruptions of banditry, with well over a hundred people killed, 210 plough-animals driven off, and innumerable valuables stolen. The County City itself was betrayed to them three times, even and the then County Magistrate, Zhu Jianjiang, was captured, and held as a hostage.

In these days of constant banditry, every villager, including the returned Overseas Chinese and their families, all wanted to be able to flee to a Diaolou to seek security there. Because of this need to defend themselves from bandits, the elders of the Kaiping clans, with the Overseas Chinese, began collecting donations to build Diaolou in their villages. Huge numbers of Diaolou, with mixed Chinese and Western design features, were thus built in these years. This caused a massive change in the character of the villages. The large numbers of Diaolou, springing up like trees in a forest, gave the Kaiping villages the appearance of strength, and suggested the presence of a definitely martial spirit.

At the same time when people were building Diaolou, numerous western style villas began to appear in the villages. Together with Diaolou, these villas also served as symbols of villages. Villas usually look nicer and more decorative than Diaolou, and more comfortable to live in.

Of the 1833 Diaolou in Kaiping, 1648 were built between 1900 and 1931. This represents 89.9% of all the Diaolou. Furthermore, most of the villages were built or rebuilt in this same period, either just before, or shortly after 1900. The late nineteenth century to the 1930s was the peak period for the building of the Kaiping villages as we see them today, and of the Diaolou.