If filial piety – or respect for one’s elders – is a traditional Confucian virtue, Xie Weili, an American born Chinese from Chicago, Illinois, was a Confucian scholar in the best sense.

Following a successful career as a merchant of pharmaceuticals in the United States, Xie answered his father’s call to return to his ancestral village in Kaiping – a major source of Chinese emigration to the United States during the first half of the last century – to build a family compound amid lavish gardens. It was the most elegant of the thousands of fortified multi-storey homes – locally known as watch towers – that dot the landscape in this part of the PRD. It was also the only one to have included extensive, and beautifully landscaped, gardens.

Li Yuan, sometime referred to in English as Li Garden, is located among the rice paddies and bamboo groves of Genghua Village in the township of Tangkou, which is 20 kilometers from downtown Kaiping. Built over a period of 10 years, it was completed in 1936. Covering an area of 19,000 square meters, it combines Western and Chinese architectural elements, drawing as well on both Eastern and Western landscaping concepts. The Jia family compound depicted in the classic Qing Dynasty novel, "Dream of the Red Chamber," is thought to have served as inspiration for the site.

The compound is divided into three sections. The first contains living quarters; the second, a grand garden; the third, a smaller garden. Included are five villas and a four-storey communal watch tower. The buildings feature pale yellow stucco exteriors and emerald green ceramic tile roofs. Artificial waterways divide the different parts, which are linked by elaborate bridges. Kiosks, pavilions, an aviary and various other structures dot the grounds, which are replete with redbud, kapok, cypress and other types of flora.

If the gardens at Li Yuan were inspired by the Jia family compound in Dream of the Red Chamber, the residential dwellings most certainly were not. At four stories, they bore little resemblance to a traditional Chinese residence, which would normally have had one floor, two at most, and built around a central courtyard. To the Western eye, the main house looked quintessentially Chinese. This is understandable as it had a lot in common with the pseudo-Chinese architectural styles found in the Chinatowns of San Francisco, Singapore and Honolulu. However, it was essentially a Western style building that was constructed of imported parts and materials. There were steam heating and indoor plumbing, and the kitchens had more in common with Western than Chinese kitchens. The Chinese architectural elements – from the temple-style roofs to the latticework windows – were essentially decorative.

Each of the residential structures housed a different branch of the clan. The communal watch tower could house the entire clan during floods or periods of turmoil, which explains the extraordinary height of not only Li Yuan, but of all the watch towers that dot the region. As the Qing Dynasty declined in power and prestige during the last half of the 19th Century, large numbers of peasants and villagers fled the area in search of a better life. Many settled in Hong Kong and Macau. Others headed further a field to such places as Taiwan, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, the United States and Australia. Most sent remittances home to support the families they left behind.

While most of the emigrants found menial jobs as construction workers helping to built railroads or working in sugar cane fields, opening restaurants or running laundries, a few prospered. Many never returned, but others did, building fine homes with the fruits of their labour. By the early years of the Chinese Republic, the once impoverished landscape was taking on the trappings of prosperity, and this attracted an increasing number of bandits to the region. Years of government neglect of the waterways, meanwhile, resulted in an increasing number of floods, which often submerged single and even two-storey dwellings.

Although there had been watch towers in Kaiping for many decades, the earlier versions had been relatively modest in scale. As unrest and the problem of flooding got increasingly out of hand, the watch towers became taller and sturdier. By the 1920s and 30s, they were usually four to five stories tall, with the tallest reaching nine stories. As flood waters approached, families could simply move themselves and their belongings to the upper floors. During bandit raids, the windows could be boarded up with metal shudders. While women and children huddled at the top, the men could take potshots through strategically placed holes in the walls and floors. Li Yuan, for example, had a small hole built into the ceiling over the front door entryway. One can only imagine what was dropped on the heads of unsuspecting (or unwanted) visitors to the stately residence.

Li Yuan was eventually abandoned, and the gardens fell into a state of neglect. Following a visit by government officials in 1957, it was declared a protected site. It became a sanitarium two years later, and was listed as a county grade historic site in 1983. Xie’s widow, Xie Yu Yaoqiong, who was then still living in the United States, was contacted by the municipal People's Government in the late 1990s. Following talks, she wrote a letter authorizing the government to administer the site for 50 years. Since then, it has been completely restored, renovated and expanded, becoming one of the most important heritage sites in the entire PRD.

Of the 3,000 watch towers that were built in Kaiping, more than 1,800 are still standing. Li Yuan is without doubt the most beautiful and the best maintained.



Where to Stay

Ever Joint Hotel
No. 2 Zhongyin Road
Kaiping, Jiangmen
(86-750) 233 3333
www.everjointhotel.com

Getting There

There are various ways of getting to Li Yuan from Hong Kong. One approach is to take the train to Shenzhen or Guangzhou and then continue on to Kaiping by bus. Going by way of Shenzhen

Photos: Courtesy, Kaiping Tourism Bureau