Kaiping Day Trip

jenniferautumnd's photostream on Flickr.

This weekend we (Christiane, Thomas, Matt and myself) got off our couches and took a day trip to Kaiping, a city that's about 3 hours away by bus. It's famous for it's buildings called Diaolous, which are essentially tiny castles slash fortified houses which were built by returning overseas Chinese who had made it big. They were greatly concerned about bandits and put much effort into these buildings for protection. The styles are unique because the overseas Chines picked up interest in architecture from around the world and integrated it with typical Chinese styles.

They are also the perfect spot to get to in case of a zombie outbreak, we've decided.

The city of Kaiping isn't great though. We had more than enough time in 6 hours too see/do everything we could. And it is not a foreigner friendly city! We had to modify our plans several times because when we got to a site, the ticket office would tell us we had to buy a ridiculously expensive ticket -- think of it this way, seeing the Terra Cotta Warriors in Xi'an cost Y70, and to see these fortified houses they wanted Y100! They even told the driver we hired that it would be free if we were Chinese. ::sigh:: sometimes China's frustratingly outdated.  Needless to say, we didn't pay it.  Instead we would try to drive around and see what we could, and at one site our driver distracted the ticket ladies while we ran by like we didn't know any better!

That aside, it was a fun trip and we got to see a decent amount. Our driver was very helpful and introduced us to different spots and the regional foods.

We left at 5:30am and got back at 11:00pm, long day! But we get to check another location off our list!

More information on Kaiping:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiping