Ancient Gualing Village

Gualing Ancient Village

Gualing Ancient Village is a typical example of the Lingnan water town style. The layout of waterways, lychee orchards, watchtowers, ancestral halls, and residential buildings held strategic significance during wartime. The waterways encircle the entire village, serving as a protective barrier, with the tallest structure along the shore being the watchtower (equivalent to a 9-story building today), which allowed for spotting enemies from afar; on the opposite bank grows a century-old lychee orchard, quite dense, and the harvest season must have been a lively sight; the residences are located in the center of the village, while ancestral halls and larger buildings are lined up along the waterfront, providing defense against external threats and protecting the villagers.

Gualing Village has a history of over 500 years and is home to Guangzhou’s only group of Qing Dynasty stilted houses built over water. It is said that around 1856, local villagers sailed overseas in three-masted ships to seek their fortunes, joining the gold rush in the Americas. By the 1930s and 1940s, a large number of villagers had moved to places like New Zealand. Thus, although the village has only about 700 residents, over 2,000 of its people live abroad, mostly in New Zealand and Australia, with some also in the United States and Canada.

As a village of overseas Chinese, Gualing is small in size but has family members spread across the world. What’s remarkable is that while some venture out, others stay behind; some seek to see the world, while others cherish the opportunities close at hand.

Every year, overseas descendants return to the ancient village to honor their ancestors. Some of them have lived abroad for five or six generations, some no longer speak Chinese, and they have almost no relatives left in their hometown. They always take a photo in front of the watchtower as a memento of “coming home.”

This small village has ancestral halls, schools, and watchtowers, with a history spanning over a hundred years. Though compact, it is rich in meaning. Surrounded by rapidly developing cities on all sides, Gualing Village stands out among other ancient villages as more of a specimen of a water town.

Gualing Village is a famous hometown of overseas Chinese. With over 700 villagers, the number of overseas Chinese living abroad is several times the local population. Perhaps thanks to the efforts of these overseas Chinese, Gualing Village has been able to stay ahead of the times. The village features a rich variety of architectural styles and a meticulously planned layout, including typical Lingnan residences from the Ming and Qing dynasties, as well as watchtowers influenced by Western architecture.

Gualing Village has two watchtowers. The one standing on the Guazhou River, which flows through Gualing Village, is called the Ningyuan Tower. It is four stories high, with a small watchtower at each of the four corners above the third floor, hence its name as the "four-corner watchtower."

Water-based watchtowers have their unique advantages. For instance, in the event of an enemy invasion, the drawbridge connected to the riverbank could be pulled up, making the watchtower highly defensible.

In the center of the first floor of the watchtower is a stone stele embedded in the wall, recording the construction process. The watchtower was built because, starting from the 1850s, villagers from Gualing continually left to seek opportunities abroad, leaving the village mostly populated by women and children. In 1919 alone, bandits kidnapped 36 family members of overseas villagers. In 1928, to prevent theft and raids, overseas villagers donated funds to build two watchtowers, one of which was the Ningyuan Tower. During the War of Resistance, this watchtower also withstood attacks by Japanese invaders, and bullet marks can still be seen on its iron windows today.

The village mainly grows fruit trees. Centered around the village, there are orchards on both sides of the river—the inner layer surrounded by lychee trees, and the outer layer by large banana trees. Flowing through the middle of the village is the Guazhou River, whose waters descend from Xiangshan Mountain south of the village before joining the Dong River. A stone bridge over the river was built in the 1980s, named the Dong’an Bridge. It is said that before the bridge was built, villagers crossed the river by ferry. The river water used to be clear, teeming with fish and shrimp. Both riverbanks were lined with lychee trees—imagine the white blossoms in spring, filling the air with fragrance, and the red lychees in summer, reflected beautifully on the blue-green water.

On the west bank of the river, the village’s widest street is called Old Street. Lined along the street are ancestral halls and academies, all facing east, totaling eight ancestral halls, most of which have a simple two-courtyard layout. The largest is the Huang Si Fang Ancestral Hall, which has a three-courtyard layout. Behind them are 11 narrow bluestone alleys, beyond which lie about 200 old and new residences, including kettle-ear houses and small villas, though the layout is no longer particularly neat.

On the east bank of the river are lychee orchards, and two small branches of the waterway, each about 20–30 meters long, have a dragon boat moored in each. Every Dragon Boat Festival, the village rows the boats out along the waterway to compete with other villages. It is said that one of the dragon boats even won second place in this year’s Guangzhou Dragon Boat Race. Dragon boating is a major event for Lingnan water towns, so the village’s history includes detailed records of its dragon boats. Before liberation, there were three dragon boats in the village; after liberation, three more were either refurbished or newly built, all of which are now docked along the shore, waiting for next year’s races.

The watchtower is built over the river and connected to the shore by a drawbridge. Standing atop the watchtower and looking north, you’ll see a small Temple of the Northern Emperor by the highway beside the river, originally built during the Qianlong era. The highway to the north of the village connects Guangzhou and Dongguan, with Gualing Village within a half-hour drive of both. Across the highway lies the urban area of Xintang. To the south of Gualing Village, the distant Nanshan Mountain can be seen, with the Shapu Town of Xintang at its foot.

The modern buildings on both sides form a distant skyline, giving the village, surrounded by lychee and banana trees, a somewhat idyllic, otherworldly charm.