Kaiping

I traveled with Global friendship and Pachamama tour to a village outside of Kaiping for day of the dead celebrations. It was a two plus hour bus ride out of the city.

Kaiping area is home to hundreds of unique Diaolou-fortress watchtowers. They were used to protect the city from invaders and we’re built during the second world eat and with conflict with Japan. Kaiping is the hometown to many overseas Chinese many of which have an interest in maintaining and finding use for the many abandoned buildings. The villages are historic and surrounded by agriculture and traditional way of life. The Diaolou and villages are enlisted as UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Tangkou village

The TK-SPACE is a communal space for international people to get together and learn and interact in rural practices and developments.

Two old factories were renovated to build this hostel and restaurant. The largest part was an old watch factory and the other made lampshades.

The place was already decorated for Halloween.

We had lunch and settled in then took a walk around the village where the abandoned buildings and diaolous. Many of the buildings the owners cannot be found or descendents won’t spend money to transfer ownership. As all the owners here are from other countries many are not here anymore and are elderly.

The design asking the to of not in concrete but of pressed rice and has survived the years.
Wet painting. While the concrete is wet, the paint is applied and they must work fast. The color stays many decades later.
This old place is like a mansion. So sad to see it empty.

This is the post office and all collect calls in the area came here which means they needed to be arranged in advance.

The mail drop.,

The Diaolou.

An old Diaolou. There is writing on the wall from 1946 where soldiers used this as a hideout during the war and to keep a lookout for japanese.
Harvesting beans by beating the stalk.
The old well for the village.
In every rice field there will be an altar for good crops and always near a banyan tree which must never be cut down.
The flowers and seeds (rice) in this rice paddy. You know how you cook rice or open a rice package and smell the rice? Standing next to the rice paddy, that is what you smell…
From the top of the Diaolou.
We painted pumpkins or skulls and are mexican day if the dead bread made as gifts to leave for the dead on Nov. 1.
To be or not to be…..

Day of the dead party

My day of the dead costume….

Morning run

We ran from village to village for a 10k run the next morning and saw this moon. It was the first full moon that fell on Halloween since 1944. The picture here in the morning is better than the one I took at night.

I also went through a UNESCO area but did not take pictures. Unfortunately we did not go back there later that day.

After breakfast, we toured the crops. This place leases land to villagers and then buys back the produce for their center. They supply jobs and economic incentives.

Taro.
Chickens.
Yam.
Eggplant.
Peanut.
They are harvesting sweet potato.
This rice is within two weeks of harvest.
This bathroom is state of the art for the area and had brought in tourism as a result.
In front of this Diaolou is water chestnuts.