Morning - Drive west to Kaiping (depart 08:00)
Leave Guangzhou and drive about two hours west into the Pearl River delta's hinterland. Kaiping was a source of emigration to Southeast Asia, the Americas and Australia, and the money sent home before the Second World War was spent on houses of a kind found nowhere else in China.
Late morning - The diaolou
The diaolou are multi-storey towers that combine Chinese domestic planning with European decorative detail - Roman columns, Islamic domes, Gothic arches - built as fortified homes during a period of banditry in the 1920s and 1930s. More than 1,800 survive across the county, and the four clusters inscribed by UNESCO in 2007 (Zili, Majianglong, Jinjiangli and Sanmenli) are the ones to see, along with the Li Garden.
Lunch
A local restaurant serving Kaiping dishes, including claypot rice and the region's preserved vegetables.
Afternoon - Villages and return
Walk one of the village clusters at a slow pace, then drive back to Guangzhou, arriving in the early evening.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day tour - no hotel night included.
