Kaiping Diaolou

Located in Zili Village, Jiangmen City, the Kaiping Diaolou are mostly residential and defensive architectural complexes built by overseas Chinese who returned from abroad during the Ming Dynasty and the Republic of China era. The majority of these buildings belong to the Fang family. There are various formats, including individual households, private courtyards, brotherly arcade buildings, joint buildings by two families, and combined buildings by several families. The basic architectural features are walls that go straight up and down without any handholds, doors and windows flush with the wall surface, the top floor serving as a watchtower, and the other floors as living quarters. Mingshi Lou is the filming location for 'Let the Bullets Fly' and is the only diaolou open for public visits. It has a flat entrance hall that serves as a kitchen and storage for agricultural tools, and there are also residential areas, with a small courtyard, totaling six floors in height. The first floor is a reception hall with bedrooms, from the second to the fifth floor the middle is a hall with bedrooms on both sides, and there are also kitchens, suggesting that each floor is occupied by one family. The sixth floor is the ancestral hall, and above that is the watchtower and observation deck, offering a panoramic view of the entire Zili Village.