Summer School 2: American Students Visit Macau and Guangzhou

Students at Pearl River Tower

Barry developed and organised as a guest lecturer for Hong Kong University (HKU) course: RECO6041 Development Projects from 30 July to 1 August 2014. The course operates in tandem with RECO6061 Development Case Studies (Hong Kong Architecture Tour).

Tour Itinerary

D-1: Macau Tour

Tour Map:

1. Venetian Macau Visit
2. Tour Old Macau

• Lisboa Hotel
  
• Grand Lisboa
  
• Club Militar 
  
• Largo do Senado 
  
• St. Dominics 
  
• St. Paul’s 
  
• Macau Museum
  
• Fortaleza do Monte
  
• Ilha de Macau ( Instituto Cultural; Centro De Saude Tap Seac; Macau Central Library; Macau Historical Archives; Tap Seac Gallery)
  
• Guia Fort and lighthouse

D-2: Kaiping Tour

Tour Map:

1. Tour Chikan Diaolou Cluster
2. Tour Majianglong Diaolou Cluster
3. Viewing Fang Clan Watch Tower
4. Viewing Guangzhou Circle
5. Tour Shamian Island


D-3: Guangzhou Tour

Tour Map:

1. Tour Pearl River Tower
2. Huacheng Park
3. Tour GZ Opera House
4. Viewing GZ New Library
5. Viewing Guangdong Museum
6. Tour Canton Tower

PSU Students at St. Lazarus Church, Macao

Guangzhou Opera House / Blogger

Notably, on the 2nd day tour, students visited a UNESCO world cultural heritage site, Kaiping, a county-level city in Guangdong province, China.

Kaiping Diaolou / Wikipedia

 It is located in the Pearl River Delta and is part of the Greater Jiangmen Region, the ancestral homeland of many overseas Chinese. Kaiping is one of the homeland of overseas Chinese of Taishanese people and Chinese Americans. in 2007, the Kaiping diaolou and villages were added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. 

The Kaiping Diaolou (碉樓) are fortified multistorey towers which were constructed in the Kaiping area from the early Qing Dynasty, reaching a peak in the 1920s and 1930s, when there were more than three thousand of these structures. Today, approximately 1,800 diaolou are still standing. The diaolou served two purposes: housing and protecting against forays by bandits.

Majianglong Village

Chikan Diaolou Cluster / 61 holiday

Kaiping has traditionally been a region of major emigration abroad, and a melting pot of ideas and trends brought back by overseas Chinese made good. As a consequence, several watchtowers incorporate architectural features from China and the West. 

Kaiping Diaolou and Villages feature the Diaolou, multi-storeyed defensive village houses in Kaiping, which display a complex and flamboyant fusion of Chinese and Western structural and decorative forms. They reflect the significant role of émigré Kaiping people in the development of several countries in South Asia, Australasia and North America, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are four groups of Diaolou and twenty of the most symbolic ones are inscribed on the List. These buildings take three forms: communal towers built by several families and used as temporary refuge, residential towers built by individual rich families and used as fortified residences, and watch towers. Built of stone, pise, brick or concrete, these buildings represent a complex and confident fusion between Chinese and Western architectural styles. Retaining a harmonious relationship with the surrounding landscape, the Diaolou testify to the final flowering of local building traditions that started in the Ming period in response to local banditry.

St. Dominics, Macau

Here are some students' diaries:

http://sites.psu.edu/friday/the-evolution-of-macau/

http://sites.psu.edu/friday/guangzhou/

http://jeffreyduclos.blogspot.com/




Reference

UNESCO:
Kaiping Diaolou and Villages