Labor Day Weekend- Kaiping Prefecture

More travel updates! We had a three-day weekend and used it go deeper into Guangdong Province and explore an area called Kaiping Prefecture. The area was built up in the late 19th century/ early 20th centuries on American money by entreprenurial Chinese who worked in the US and sent the money back home. Around the same time Southeast China was continuously being invaded and pillaged by the Japanese (the Pearl River Delta was perfect for this) so they built Diaolou (watchtowers) for security purposes. Then during the Cultural Revolution many of the rich folk were displaced; either sent to reeducation camps, killed or fled to Canada, HK, the US or anywhere else. There are still people living in these villages, but many of the buildings are uninhabited and the children have left their ancestral homelands in the country to pursue wealth in the big cities (like GZ). Some of the Diaolous have been rehabbed, while some have even been turned into a UNESCO site. 

A couple of friends from school asked if we wanted to travel together to a place they had stayed before the pandemic, TK Village Inn. It's a hostel type hotel that used to be a watch factory, but has been rehabbed by a Hong Kong native named Rocky who for about 15 years has been working on conserving the heritage, culture and environment of the Tangkou Village area. He employs a large portion of the local population for a variety of jobs and is an overall inspiring guy. Needless to say, we had a blast riding bikes, eating from the 'farm to table' restaurant and just being in the countryside out of Guangzhou. Here are some of the images from the trip. 

Labor Day children's craft project

Natural Dying

Overgrown Alley

Old Kitchen

Reclamation by Nature 

Leftover Communist Propaganda 

Exploring on bikes

Farmland everywhere

TK Village Inn/ Old Watch Factory

Rice Fields 

No players today

The old villages are still holding on

Scenery 

More Communist propaganda 

Majianglong Village- Lin Villa 

Inconspicuous Security  

Always looking

The insides are beautiful

Cool alleys

Kaiping Diaolou & Village Unesco Site 

Cameras everywhere

Posing 

Repping the sign 

Ash observing a gazebo in the Li Garden

Li Garden Entrance with our travel mates 

Family Pic

"It's a home for spiders" 

More cool alleys

The girls played a ton of foosball and had a blast doing it

TK Village Inn Farm: Canal in the Morning

Rocky explaining the history on a bike tour

Pro riders

Inn Handyman

Co and Lea raising Ashley's blood pressure

Tomato picking in the Garden

Rice fields everywhere

The countdown continues...